Thesis: Gabriel Brostow's PhD (2004): "Novel Skeletal Representation for Articulated Creatures"
We define a Spine as a branching axial structure representing the shape and topology of a 3D objects limbs, and capturing the limbs correspondence and motion over time. … In general, our approach combines the objectives of generalized cylinders, 3D scanning, and markerless motion capture to generate baseline models from real puppets, animals, and human subjects.