A formal picture description scheme as a basis for picture processing systems

A formal picture description scheme to be used as the basis for picture processing systems is presented. The scheme is applicable to a large class of pictures including, but not restricted to, those containing line-like elements. The paper first presents a general linguistic model for picture processing in which the analysis and generation of pictures are defined as the derivation and execution, respectively, of descriptions. A particular realization of the descriptive component of the model including some of its formal properties is then given; a picture class is described in terms of its underlying graph structures by a grammar generating strings in a picture description language. A series of examples illustrate the capability and limitations of the description scheme. Some applications of implemented systems to the analysis and generation of pictures are discussed