Pattern Recognition of Contour Lines for Automatic Contour Mapping System

For the Direct Contour Mapping (DCM) method, a new pattern recognition algorithm of contour lines is proposed. The DCM proposed by the authors is effective for the automatic contour mapping of a solid body, because every contour line is chased on the solid body and the chain code data of the contour line is obtained directly. However, each contour line is a closed curve, and it is difficult for the DCM to measure a solid body which has more than two peaks and therefore, has more than two closed contour lines of the same level. To avoid this difficulty, the property of the chain code data is analyzed, and the shape of the contour line is recognized by a host computer of the automatic contour mapping system. The host computer compares a newly detected contour line with a former one, and when the computer recognizes the change of the shape of the contour line, the system tries to find out an independent contour line of the same level. With the proposed pattern recognition algorithm, the contour map of a solid body having more than two peaks can be obtained automatically.