An optimal lossy segmentation encoding scheme

In this paper, we present a fast and optimal method for the lossy encoding of object boundaries which are given as 8-connect chain codes. We approximate the boundary by a polygon and consider the problem of nding the polygon which can be encoded with the smallest number of bits for a given maximum distortion. To this end, we derive a fast and optimal scheme which is based on a shortest path algorithm for a weighted directed acyclic graph. We further investigate the dual problem of nding the polygonal approximation which leads to the smallest maximum distortion for a given bit rate. We present an iterative scheme which employs the above mentioned shortest path algorithm and prove that it converges to the optimal solution. We then extend the proposed algorithm to the encoding of multiple object boundaries and introduce a vertex encoding scheme which is a combination of an 8-connect chain code and a run-length code. We present results of the proposed algorithm using objects from the \Miss America" sequence.