On the application of autoregressive models to the representation of planar curves

The problem of compact representations of planar curves using autoregressive (AR) models is discussed. The circular AR representation has been generalized to include the set of open curves. It is shown that the well-known covariance and autocorrelation methods used in speech processing fit naturally into the framework of estimating the AR coefficients for closed contours and for open planar curves, respectively. Application to error-free data compression of handwritten characters has yielded compression ratios as high as 2 to 3. Experiments have been carried out to evaluate the applicability of this method to the problem of interpolation of missing points of a curve