An efficient encoding scheme for arbitrary curves, based on the chain code representation, has been proposed. The encoding scheme takes advantage of the property that a curve with gentle curvature is divided into somewhat long curve sections (segments), each of which is represented by a sequence of two adjacent-direction chain codes. The coding efficiency of the scheme becomes higher as the segments become longer, while a variable-length coding technique makes it possible to encode short segments without an extreme increase in code amount. An experiment with complicated curves obtained from geographic maps has shown a high data compression rate of the proposed scheme, whose code amount is about 50-60 percent of that required for the conventional chain encoding scheme.
['Toru Kaneko', 'Masashi Okudaira']
Encoding of Arbitrary Curves Based on the Chain Code Representation