curvature of a discrete function

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David Kusnirak
David Kusnirak on 16 Jan 2013
Edited: Jan on 13 Mar 2022
Hello,
I need to compute a curvature of a simple 2D discrete function like this one:
x=1:0.5:20;
y=exp(x);
can anybody help how to do that? thanks

Accepted Answer

Jan
Jan on 16 Jan 2013
Edited: Jan on 13 Mar 2022
Your function seems to be a 1D function.
Are you looking for the 2nd derivative? While diff calculates the one-sided differential quotient, gradient uses the two-sided inside the interval:
gradient(gradient(y))
If you mean the curvature as reciprocal radius of the local fitting circle:
dx = gradient(x);
ddx = gradient(dx);
dy = gradient(y);
ddy = gradient(dy);
num = dx .* ddy - ddx .* dy;
denom = dx .* dx + dy .* dy;
denom = sqrt(denom) .^ 3;
curvature = num ./ denom;
curvature(denom < 0) = NaN;
Please test this, because I'm not sure if I remember the formulas correctly.
  3 Comments
Jan
Jan on 16 Jan 2013
Edited: Jan on 16 Jan 2013
Therefore I'm using an efficient C-Mex function: FEX: DGradient, which is 10 to 20 times faster and handles unevenly spaced data more accurate.
Jan
Jan on 16 Jan 2013
Edited: Jan on 13 Mar 2022
x = rand(1, 1e6);
tic; ddx = gradient(gradient(x)); toc
tic; ddx = DGradient(DGradient(x)); toc
tic; ddx = conv(x,[.25 0 -.5 0 .25],'same'); toc
Elapsed time is 0.251547 seconds.
Elapsed time is 0.025728 seconds.
Elapsed time is 0.028208 seconds
Matlab 2009a/64, Core2Duo, Win7

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More Answers (2)

Roger Stafford
Roger Stafford on 16 Jan 2013
Edited: Bruno Luong on 13 Mar 2022
Let (x1,y1), (x2,y2), and (x3,y3) be three successive points on your curve. The curvature of a circle drawn through them is simply four times the area of the triangle formed by the three points divided by the product of its three sides. Using the coordinates of the points this is given by:
K = 2*abs((x2-x1).*(y3-y1)-(x3-x1).*(y2-y1)) ./ ...
sqrt(((x2-x1).^2+(y2-y1).^2).*((x3-x1).^2+(y3-y1).^2).*((x3-x2).^2+(y3-y2).^2));
You can consider this as an approximation to the curve's curvature at the middle point of the three points.

Matt J
Matt J on 16 Jan 2013
Edited: Matt J on 16 Jan 2013
diff(y,2)./0.5^2

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