GPU point list generation through histogram pyramids

Image Pyramids are frequently used in porting non-local algorithms to graphics hardware. A Histogram pyramid (short: HistoPyramid), a special version of image pyramid, sums up the number of active entries in a 2D image hierarchically. We show how a HistoPyramid can be utilized as an implicit indexing data structure, allowing us to convert a sparse matrix into a coordinate list of active cell entries (a point list) on graphics hardware . The algorithm reduces a highly sparse matrix with N elements to a list of its M active entries in O(N) + M (log N) steps, despite the restricted graphics hardware architecture. Applications are numerous, including feature detection, pixel classification and binning, conversion of 3D volumes to particle clouds and sparse matrix compression