Piecewise-Linear Contour Approximation and Linear Sections Detection

The known and newly proposed methods of piecewise-linear approximation of both closed and opened contours are investigated. There are considered the methods of contour approximation, which provide a given approximation accuracy in terms of the distance from each pixel of the contour to the corresponding approximating straight line. Two methods for detecting straight lines in a contour image are proposed, having a linear computational complexity that is a multiple of the number of pixels in the contours in a binary image.