The Algorithm Design Manual
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The Stony Brook Algorithm Repository

Steven Skiena
Stony Brook University
Dept. of Computer Science

1.6.12 Simplifying Polygons

Problem Input | Problem Output

INPUT                    OUTPUT


Input Description: A polygon or polyhedron p, with n vertices.

Problem: Find a polygon or polyhedron p' with n' vertices, where the shape of p' is close to p while n' << n.

Excerpt from The Algorithm Design Manual: Polygon simplification has two primary applications. The first is in cleaning up a noisy representation of a polygon, perhaps obtained by scanning a picture of an object. By processing it, we hope to remove the noise and reconstruct the original object. The second is in data compression, where given a large and complicated object, we seek to simplify it by reducing detail. Ideally, we obtain a polygon with far fewer vertices that looks essentially the same. This can be a big win in computer graphics, where replacing a large model with a smaller model might have little visual impact but be significantly faster to render.


Implementations

  • Douglas-Peucker line simplification algorithm implementation by Jack Snoeyink (C) (rating 8)
  • QSlim: quadric-based simplification algorithm (C++) (rating 7)
  • Cocone Software for surface reconstruction and medial axis (Application) (rating 7)
  • CGAL: The Computational Geometry Algorithms Library (C++) (rating 7)
  • Skeletonization Software () (rating 4)

  • Recommended Books

    Computational Geometry : Algorithms and Applications by Mark De Berg, Marc Van Kreveld, Mark Overmars, and O. Schwartskopf Computational Geometry in C by Joseph O'Rourke Discrete Voronoi Skeletons by R. Ogniewicz

    Related Problems


      
    Convex Hull
      
    Discrete Fourier Transform
      
    Minkowski Sum



    This page last modified on 2008-07-10 .
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