MEANS AND METHOD OF REPRESENTING AN OBJECT SHAPE BY HIERARCHICAL BOUNDARY DECOMPOSITION

Information on the shape of an object is extracted by generating an image of the object, encoding and ordering the boundary points of the image, selecting points on the outermost portions of the boundary, partitioning the boundary at the selected points into segments of either a first or second kind wherein the segments are distinguished according to a selected smoothness test, and segments of the first kind are smoother than segments of the second kind, partitioning each segment of the second kind into segments of the first or second kind according to the above test, and continuing the partitioning of each of the segments of the second kind into segments of the first or second kind until no further segments of the second kind are identified. An apparatus for performing the above steps is also disclosed.