Compression of image contours using combinatorial optimization
R. Nygaard, J.H. Husøy, Dag Haugland · 2002
Compression of image contours is an important problem in many contexts. An example is object oriented video coding, where efficient encoding of shape information of arbitrarily shaped objects is a major problem. This paper presents a method for compressing contours by extracting representative points from the original curve. By formulating the point selection problem as a graph theory problem, known optimization theory can be applied in order to yield optimal compression with respect to a given error bound. The contour is reconstructed based on linear interpolation among the extracted curve points. The method presented guarantees a minimal distortion for a given number of retained curve points. Compared to many other compression methods, this method shows superior performance.