Contour coding of images

This paper describes a coding strategy which stores digital images in terms of their contours. The data in the original raw image is reorganised into a set of 1-d trajectories and these are normalised in length and approximated by low rank models. It is the coefficients of these models which are retained. The second order statistical information is used to derive a vector codebook containing standard sets of coefficients, and each contour is allocated the codeword of the nearest standard vector. In this way a codebook of generating functions for standard shapes is obtained. The problems of non closing contours are addressed along with interpolation methods to produce a reconstructed image from a contoured image.