Region boundary generation and compression

A new technique for generating and losslessly compressing region boundaries in digital images is presented. Region boundaries are generated by finding a minimal set of pixels required to differentiate each region from neighboring regions. An enhanced pixel-based differential chain code is used to encode the generated boundaries. We utilize run-length encoding of links and introduce dynamic template switching (DTS) and extended vector templates (EVTs). These features allow accurate region boundary representation using fewer links while retaining the inherent simplicity of traditional chain codes. This work presents techniques to efficiently handle the added complexity of using pixel-based chain codes for representing regions in segmented images.