Region representation: parallel connected stripes

A new coding scheme is presented for the representation of polygons or, more generally, of regions. This method is particularly suitable for the simultaneous management of several regions and hence for the solution of problems connected with automatic cartography or with CAD. The basic idea lies in the subdivision of the regions to be represented as horizontal stripes of uniform height and the management of these stripes as basic units of information. In this way, the data to be represented are "rasterized." Algorithms are given for coding and decoding vectorial information (the boundaries of the regions to be represented) and for the main operations that may be done on the resulting data structure. In comparison with classical methods, the scheme presented here offers the possibility of distinguishing boundaries of regions from those of holes, efficiency of the algorithms used, and some compression of the memory needed. In addition, the particular nature of the method eliminates the problems or information ambiguity and redundancy of other schemes.