A scale-space technique for polygonal approximation of planar curves

A novel technique is proposed for polygonal approximation of planar curves under a given maximum of approximation error and with a given initial vertex. Different to the existing techniques in this field, which usually accept a fixed error, the proposed technique uses a flexible acceptable error to obtain the approximate polygon. This idea is based on a scale-space concept in computer vision. It can not only ensure the error between the original and approximated curves is no lager than the maximal acceptable error, but also make the description of the detail information of the curve more precise without significant loss. Experiments are conducted to compare the new technique with the existing error-fixed techniques.