Distance to perimeter from a point inside of a graphed shape

Hi all,

In need of help creating a code to find distances (particularly the smallest distance) from a point inside of a graphed shape to the outside or perimeter of said shape. That said, since it's not an image, bwdist or a function similar to that shouldn't be used for this.

I'm new to matlab and its interfaces, so if there's any way you could leave exactly what I should type in the answers below, or provide a tutorial on how the command works, that would be appreciated.

Thanks for your time! Ethan

Edit: the issue with bwdist for me isn't that I have to convert one graph to an image using an outside program, it's that there are thousands of these same graphs which I can't automate the process of working on if they're being put into image form. This post is specifically to see if anyone knows any other workarounds for bwdist. .

[Rik]

You could convert your graph to an image, so then you could you functions like bwdist. You can use in polygon to convert to binary.

[ethan campbell]

I should've made myself a tad clearer in my question: I know how to use bwdist and how to convert the graph to a binary image... I'm checking to see if there's another way outside of converting the graph into an image where I can get the same results. Sorry for the confusion!