  Many surfactant-based formulations are utilised in industry as they produce
desirable visco-elastic properties at low-concentrations. These properties are
due to the presence of worm-like micelles (WLM) and, as a result, understanding
the processes that lead to WLM formation is of significant interest. Various
experimental techniques have been applied with some success to this problem but
can encounter issues probing key microscopic characteristics or the specific
regimes of interest. The complementary use of computer simulations could
provide an alternate route to accessing their structural and dynamic behaviour.
However, few computational methods exist for measuring key characteristics of
WLMs formed in particle simulations. Further, their mathematical formulation
are challenged by WLMs with sharp curvature profiles or density fluctuations
along the backbone. Here we present a new topological algorithm for identifying
and characterising WLMs micelles in particle simulations which has desirable
mathematical properties that address short-comings in previous techniques. We
apply the algorithm to the case of Sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) micelles to
demonstrate how it can be used to construct a comprehensive topological
characterisation of the observed structures.
