DATA STRUCTURES FOR PATTERN RECOGNITION AIXORITRMS: A Case Study
Charles T. Zahn, Encoding Digital Pictures · 1975
This paper will describe experiences gained while programming several pattern recognition algorithms in the languages ALGOL, FORTRAN, PL/l and PASCAL. The algorithms discussed are for boundary encodings of twodimensional binary pictures, calculating and exploring the minimum spanning tree for a set of points, recognizing dotted curves from a set of planar points and performing a template matching in the presence of severe noise distortions. The lesson seems to be that pattern recognition algorithms require a range of data fitrucWring capabilities for their implementation, in particular arrays , graphs and lists. The languages PL/l and PASCAL have facilities to accommodate graphs and lists but there are important differences for the programmer. The ease with;which the template matching program was written, debugged and modified during a 3 week period, using PASCAL, suggests that this small but powerful language should not be overlooked by those researchers who need a quick, reliable, and efficient implementation of a pattern recognition algorithm requiring graphs, lists and arrays.