Topological bar-codes of fractals: a new characterization of symmetric binary fractal trees
The goal of this paper is to provide foundations for a new way to classify and characterize fractals using methods of computational topology. The fractal dimension is a main characteristic of fractal-like objects, and has proved to be a very useful tool for applications. However, it does not fully characterize a fractal. We can obtain fractals with the same dimension that are quite different topologically. Motivated by techniques from shape theory and computational topology, we consider fractals...