Digital Fundamental Groups and Edge Groups of Clique Complexes

Abstract: In previous work, we have defined---intrinsically, entirely within the digital setting---a fundamental group for digital images. Here, we show that this group is isomorphic to the edge group of the clique complex of the digital image considered as a graph. The clique complex is a simplicial complex and its edge group is well-known to be isomorphic to the ordinary (topological) fundamental group of its geometric realization. This identification of our intrinsic digital fundamental group with a topological fundamental group---extrinsic to the digital setting---means that many familiar facts about the ordinary fundamental group may be translated into their counterparts for the digital fundamental group: The digital fundamental group of any digital circle is $\mathbb{Z}$; a version of the Seifert-van Kampen Theorem holds for our digital fundamental group; every finitely presented group occurs as the (digital) fundamental group of some digital image. We also show that the (digital) fundamental group of every 2D digital image is a free group.