  It is shown that an alternative approach for the characterization of growing
branched patterns consists of the statistical analysis of frozen structures,
which cannot be modified by further growth, that arise due to competitive
processes among neighbor growing structures. Scaling relationships applied to
these structures provide a method to evaluate relevant exponents and to
characterize growing systems into universality classes. The analysis is applied
to quasi-two-dimensional electrochemically formed silver branched patterns
showing that the size distribution of frozen structures exhibits scale
invariance. The measured exponents, within the error bars, remind us those
predicted by the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation.
