A data structure for the parallel processing of chains

This paper presents a data structure which facilitates the parallel processing of chain encoded blobs. Application of the data structure to the formation of the convex hull, the minimum area enclosing rectangle, and the formation of a polygonal approximation is described. The parallel processing of digital images can be achieved by sub-dividing the image and distributing the sub-images to several processors working in parallel. This approach applies both to the images represented as a matrix of pixels and as a chain describing the contours within the image. However, merging the results from each separate process is not always a simple matter. Thus, in the formation of the convex hull, the `partial hulls´ from each parallel process have themselves to be subjected to a similar process how operating on partial hulls rather than the original sub-images