MODULAR CELLULAR AUTOMATION FOR LINE ASSOCIATION AND IDENTIFICATION

A modular, cellular automaton system (26) for identifying patterns in multi-dimensional data. The system includes a regular two-dimensional array (40) of interconnected processing cells (44) and data cells (42), wherein each data cell (42) is located at a particular x-y location on a cartesian coordinate system. The system (26) includes a means for accepting the data and for transmitting the data to data cells (42) having x-y coordinate locations which correspond to the coordinates of the data points. The system (26) sums data values surrounding each of the data values and compares the sums with a threshold. Sums are set to zero if the threshold is not exceeded. In an iterative process, the summing and thresholding is repeated until the sum is set to zero or the sum no longer changes on two consecutive iterations. In this way, data cells (42) which remain at non-zero values together form the pattern to be identified in the data.