Real-time polygon extraction from complex images

This paper presents an algorithm that is capable of extracting polygons from complex digital images for real-time video-applications. The algorithm uses a high-accuracy, real-time (HART) line-feature extraction algorithm to extract the line segments from the digital image. Then these line segments are grouped into triangles and quadrilaterals using an efficient scanning method that can be easily extended to n-sided polygons. The algorithm can process both convex and concave polygons. Tests were performed on a variety of 256/spl times/256 grayscale synthetic and natural images and an average frame rate of 58 frames per second was achieved using a 450 MHz Pentium II processor. Experiments show that the algorithm accurately extracts the polygons from complex images.