An Iterative Procedure for the Polygonal Approximation of Plane Curves

The approximation of arbitrary two-dimensional curves by polygons is an important technique in image processing. For many applications, the apparent ideal procedure is to represent lines and boundaries by means of polygons with minimum number of vertices and satisfying a given fit criterion. In this paper, an approximation algorithm is presented which uses an iterative method to produce polygons with a small-but not minimum-number of vertices that lie on the given curve. The maximum distance of the curve from the approximating polygon is chosen as the fit criterion. The results obtained justify the abandonment of the minimum- vertices criterion which is computationally much more expensiv