IMAGE REPRESENTATION USING TREE-LIKE STRUCTURES

An image, having N dimensions, is partitioned into a set of bounded arbitrarily shaped regions. This partitioning is achieved through the use of arbitrarily shaped N-1 dimensional surfaces which pass through the boundaries of the image. The arbitrarily shaped regions are represented in the leaf nodes of a binary tree and the arbitrarily shaped surfaces, which are used to partition the image, are represented in the non-leaf nodes of the tree. In a preferred embodiment, arbitrarily oriented lines passing through the image boundaries are employed to partition a two-dimensional image into a set of convex regions. The convex regions are represented in the leaf nodes of a binary tree and the arbitrarily oriented lines, which are used to partition the image, are represented in the non-leaf nodes of the tree. Furthermore, the arbitrarily oriented lines are selected through the use of a Hough transform and the image is partitioned, along the selected lines, in a recursive manner as the binary tree is developed.