Fast progressive polygonal approximations for online strokes

Abstract

This paper presents a fast and progressive polygonal approximation algorithm for online strokes. A stroke is defined as a sequence of points between a pen-down and a pen-up. The proposed method generates polygonal approximations progressively as the user inputs the stroke. The proposed algorithm is suitable for real time shape modeling and retrieval. The number of operations used in the proposed algorithm is bounded by O(n), where n is the number of points in a stroke. Detailed experimental results show that the proposed method is not only fast, but also accurate enough compared to other reported algorithms.