Proximal Nerve Complexes. A Computational Topology Approach

This article introduces a theory of proximal nerve complexes and nerve spokes, restricted to the triangulation of finite regions in the Euclidean plane. A nerve complex is a collection of filled triangles with a common vertex, covering a finite region of the plane. Structures called $k$-spokes, $k\geq 1$, are a natural extension of nerve complexes. A $k$-spoke is the union of a collection of filled triangles that pairwise either have a common edge or a common vertex. A consideration of the closeness of nerve complexes leads to a proximal view of simplicial complexes. A practical application of proximal nerve complexes is given, briefly, in terms of object shape geometry in digital images.