A Novel Split-and-Merge Technique for Error-Bounded Polygonal Approximation

How to use a polygon with the fewest possible sides to approximate a shape boundary is an important issue in pattern recognition and image processing. A novel split-and-merge technique(SMT) is proposed. SMT starts with an initial shape boundary segmentation, split and merge are then alternately done against the shape boundary. The procedure is halted when the pre-specified iteration number is achieved. For increasing stability of SMT and improving its robustness to the initial segmentation, a ranking-selection scheme is utilized to choose the splitting and merging points. The experimental results show its superiority.