Reliable polygonal approximations of imaged real objects through dominant point detection

The problem of dominant point detection is posed, taking into account what usually happens in practice. The algorithms found in the literature often prove their performance with laboratory contours, but the shapes in real images present noise, quantization, and high inter and intra-shape variability. These effects are analyzed and solutions to them are proposed. We will also focus on the conditions for an efficient (few points) and precise (low error) dominant point extraction that preserves the original shape. A measurement of the committed error (optimization error, E-0) that rakes into account both aspects is defined for studying this feature. (C) 1998 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.