Computer Vision and Image Understanding 115 (2011) 1552–1558

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Computer Vision and Image Understanding

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cviu

Graph theory based segmentation of traced boundary into open and closed
sub-sections
Nitin Narappanawar a, B. Madhusudan Rao b,⇑, Maduri Joshi c
a
Interdisciplinary School of Scientific Computing, UoP, Pune 411 007, India
b
International Institute of Information Technology, SoST, Pune 411 057, India
c
College of Engineering, Wellesely Rd., Shivajinagar, Pune 411 005, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Many shape descriptors based on the boundary have been developed for feature extraction and pattern
Received 19 January 2011 matching/recognition of objects. This paper presents a novel algorithm to segment a traced boundary in
Accepted 19 July 2011 open and closed sub-sections. The obtained sub-sections can be utilized for generating more features
Available online 27 July 2011
while being one of the features. A traced boundary has been considered as an undirected graph with pix-
els representing the vertices. It is proved that ‘‘For a boundary traced using 8-connectivity maximum
Keywords: degree of a vertex cannot exceed four’’. This aspect and the instances of degree and number of occur-
Border following
rences are used to categorize all the vertices in eight exhaustive types. Six of these are identified as
Boundary following
Boundary traversing
critical vertices. The segmentation is done based on the principle that in an Eulerian circuit, each edge
Boundary segmentation is traversed only once. Further segregation in open and closed sub-graphs is done by choosing critical ver-
Component segmentation tices at a minimum directed distance. The testing of the algorithm has been done on artificially generated
Component identification images and from different databases of hand written text. The performance analysis shows that the
Identifying strokes execution time is a linear function of the number of occurrences of each type of the vertices. The perfor-
OCR mance analysis is further supported using multiple regression.
Multiple regression analysis Ó 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction spline curves. Such a representation is mostly used for capturing

The shape of an object is one of the most important information
captured by human vision. The information is further used to iden-
tify and classify objects. The best example is reading a script. The
letters are recognized by the corresponding shapes. Various
boundary descriptors for capturing the shape of an object are used,
such as Fourier descriptors [1,2], Hough transform based descrip-
tors [3,4] and Chain Code descriptors [5,6]. All these techniques
require traced boundary as an input. The goal of a boundary seg-
mentation algorithm is to partition a traced boundary of a region
into smaller sub-sections having some predefined properties. The
techniques described above can then be used on segmented
components of the boundary to give a finer description of the
shape of the object.
There are many types of straight-segment boundary representa-
tions [7–9]; the primary problem is in determining the location of
corners in a boundary. There are several algorithms for locating
corners in an image. The corner detection is based either on bound-
ary or on intensity. A literature survey of 114 algorithms for corner
detection can be found at [10]. Boundary segmentation into
segments of constant curvature is another possibility for boundary
representation. Boundaries can then be represented with various
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: bellarymrao@gmail.com (B. Madhusudan Rao).
smoother shapes. Various capturing techniques have been intro-
duced, using different spline models like Bezier splines [11–13],
B-splines [14], Hermite interpolation [15] and rational cubic inter-
polation [16]. Segmentation of boundary based on detection of cor-
ner, inflection and transition points is another approach described
at [17].
A boundary in general can be considered as comprising open
and closed sub-sections. An open boundary is an 8-connected
(open) path of region pixels which are 4-connected with the back-
ground. A closed boundary is an 8-connected closed path of region
pixels which are 4-connected with the background. The region pix-
els can be considered as vertices of a planar graph. The edges of the
graph are imaginary lines joining the centers of the region pixels.
Then from the theory of planar graphs a boundary is a path. If
end vertices of the path are same then the path is called a circuit.
Eulerian circuit in a graph is defined as a circuit that traverses each
edge in the graph once and only once. Degree of a vertex is the
number of edges incident on it. An undirected graph possesses
an Eulerian circuit (or an Eulerian graph) if and only if it is con-
nected and its vertices are all of even degree [18,19]. A traced
closed boundary can be thought of as an Eulerian circuit. Hence
the vertices of a traced closed boundary should be of even degree.
Also, for each boundary pixel on a closed boundary there are at
least two boundary pixels in its 3  3 neighborhood. Therefore,
from each boundary pixel of a closed boundary, even number of

1077-3142/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cviu.2011.07.002
 N. Narappanawar et al. / Computer Vision and Image Understanding 115 (2011) 1552–1558
connections will be established in the tracing process. If in a traced
boundary a vertex (pixel) is found with odd degree, then at least
one of the connections is for an open boundary. Hence, a boundary
in general can be considered as comprising open and closed sub-
sections.
In this paper we present a novel algorithm for segmenting a
traced boundary into open and closed sub-sections. Section 2 gives
the algorithm to separate the open and closed sub-sections in a
traced boundary. Section 3 mathematically supports the presented
algorithm using theory of graphs. Specifically, it proves that the
maximum degree of a vertex in a traced boundary is four. Section
4 gives the results and conclusions.
2. Locating open and closed sub-sections in a traced boundary
A boundary can be traced in clockwise or anticlockwise direc-
tion. For the implementations in this paper, boundary is traced
using anticlockwise direction. For tracing the external and/or the
internal boundary, several different algorithms can be used
[20,21]. A traced boundary is a connected graph. It is to be split in
sub-graphs [18], such that each sub-graph is connected and has
only one open or closed boundary. Further processing, for example
characterization, can then be taken up on the sub-graphs. The algo-
rithm to achieve the task is based on the following considerations:
1. The vertices of even degree can be a part of an open or a
closed sub-section. However, a vertex of odd degree will
have at least one open sub-section connected to it.
2. Using Handshaking Lemma it can be proved that in a con-
nected graph the number of vertices of odd degree is always
even [22].
3. In Section 3 it is proved that, if a boundary is traced using 8-
connectivity and is considered as an undirected, connected
graph, with pixels as vertices, then the degree of a vertex
cannot exceed four.
4. Eulerian circuit does not have a repeated edge but it may
have repeated vertex.
5. In succeeding sections, a vertex of type ‘‘oxdy’’, would mean
a vertex with ‘‘x’’ occurrences and ‘‘y’’ degree. Sometimes we
will also use ‘‘oxdy’’ to represent number of vertices of the
type ‘‘oxdy’’. Six types of vertices in a traced boundary are
identified as critical. They are:
a. Number of occurrences = 1, degree = 1 (o1d1): The edges
from this vertex will be incident on the same vertex.
b. Number of occurrences = 2, degree = 3 (o2d3): In both
the occurrences an edge from this vertex will be incident
on the same vertex say V. A connection to V is the one
that belongs to an open sub-section. The other two verti-
ces are connections to a closed sub-section.
c. Number of occurrences = 2, degree = 4 (o2d4): Two
closed sub-sections are joined at this vertex.
d. Number of occurrences = 3, degree = 3 (o3d3): Three
open sub-sections are joined at this vertex.
e. Number of occurrences = 3, degree = 4 (o3d4): One
closed sub-section and two open sub-sections are joined
at this vertex.
f. Number of occurrences = 4, degree = 4 (o4d4): Four open
sub-sections are joined at this vertex.
6. Two types of vertices in a traced boundary that are not crit-
ical are:
a. Number of occurrences = 1, degree = 2 (o1d2): Main ver-
tices of a closed boundary.
b. Number of occurrences = 2, degree = 2 (o2d2): Main ver-
tices of an open boundary.
1553
7. In [20], while tracing a boundary, repetition of a directed
edge is used as a terminating condition. Hence, in a traced
boundary a directed edge is not repeated. Therefore, a vertex
with occurrences greater than degree is not possible. Thus,
a. Occurrences cannot exceed 4 and the possible types of
vertices are limited to 16.
b. Six types of vertices {o2d1, o3d1, o3d2, o4d3, o4d2,
o4d1} cannot exist in a traced boundary.
8. Two types of vertices {o1d3, o1d4} cannot exist in a traced
boundary as a vertex with one occurrence can be connected
to utmost two vertices, the previous one and the next one.
9. Statements 7 and 8 show that vertices types identified in
statements 5 and 6 are exhaustive for a traced boundary.
The presented algorithm addresses all these eight types of
vertices.
10. To locate the connections to an open or a closed sub-section
at the critical vertices with multiple occurrences, the incom-
ing and outgoing connections need re-adjustment.
11. In the process of isolating the open and closed sub-graphs,
the next critical vertex Vb is chosen at a minimum directed
distance in the direction of tracing, from the current vertex
Va. Let the indices be from 1 to N and ‘b’ and ‘a’ be the indices
of Vb and Va respectively. The directed distance in tracing
units, in the direction of tracing, d (Vb, Va) = b  a if b P a
and d (Vb, Va) = b  a + N if b < a.
2.1. The algorithm
For defining the algorithm following are the data structure def-
initions and support functions:
1. The input is traced boundary ‘B’, where each pixel/vertex is
specified by coordinates (xt, yt), at an index ‘t’. The number
of entries in B are N. The indices are from 1 to N. The special
case N = 1 should be treated separately.
2. ‘NumOcc’ holds number of occurrences of a vertex in the
traced boundary.
3. ‘Indices’ holds the indices of the vertices corresponding to
the number of occurrences in NumOcc.
4. ‘CritVertxLst’ holds {index, previous index, next index, Label,
open/close status}. NoEnt = 5; PosI = 1; PosPI = 2; PosNI = 3;
PosLbl = 4; PosStat = 5;
5. ‘CritVertxLstOpen’ holds {index, previous index, next index,
Label, ‘o’}
6. ‘CritVertxLstClosed’ holds {index, previous index, next index,
Label, ‘c’}
7. indx = Incr (t) will do: indx t + 1; If indx > N, indx 1;
Similarly, indx = Decr (t) will do: indx t  1; If indx < 1,
indx N;
8. Status = comp (s, t) will do: Status ‘c’; If (xs == xt) &&
(ys == yt), Status ‘o’;
9. d = Dist (a, b) will do: d b  a; If d < 0, d d + N;
10. If input is a single circuit it will have no critical vertices, e.g.
‘‘O’’. In this case CritVertxLst will be empty. However, to
bring uniformity in subsequent processing, we will set Crit-
VertxLstClosed with one entry.
2.1.1. Algorithm for generating CritVertxLstOpen and
CritVertxLstClosed lists from a traced boundary
1. Get traced boundary B and N the number of vertices (N > 1).
2. Obtain the binding rectangle (xmin, ymin) and (xmax, ymax) for
coordinates in B.
3. R (ymax  ymin + 1); C (xmax  xmin + 1);
1554 N. Narappanawar et al. / Computer Vision and Image Understanding 115 (2011) 1552–1558

4. Initialize: NumOcc (R, C) 0; Indices (R, C, 4) 0; Crit- 2.1.2. Algorithm for isolating all open segments in OpenSubGraphs
VertxLst (N, NoEnt) 0 (Maximum number of occurrences using CritVertxLstOpen
for a vertex is 4)
5. For i = 1 to N (Gather occurrences and incidences) 1. Get traced boundary B and N the number of vertices.
a. Xi xi  xmin + 1; Yi yi  ymin + 1; (Translation to bind- 2. Get the list of critical vertices for open segments CritVertxLst-
ing rectangle coordinates) Open and their count P.
b. NumOcc (Yi, Xi) NumOcc (Yi, Xi) + 1; 3. Initialize: OpenSubGraphs (N, (P/2)) 0; (the total number of
c. Indices (Yi, Xi, NumOcc (Yi, Xi)) i; sub-graphs will be half of P).
6. lbl 1, k 1; 4. OpenSegment 1;
7. For i = 1 to N (Critical vertex identification and status 5. For Vn = 1 to P
assignment) a. min N + 1; Vc Vn;
a. tx Xi; ty Yi; count NumOcc (ty, tx); b. VnIndex CritVertxLstOpen (Vn, PosI);
b. NumOcc (ty, tx) 0; c. If (VnIndex), ( index is not 0, implies not a deleted vertex)
c. switch (count) i. VnNxt CritVertxLstOpen (Vn, PosNI);
i. case 0: nothing to be done. ii. For j = Vn + 1 to P
ii. case 1: 1. VjIndex CritVertxLstOpen (j, PosI);
1. temp1 Indices (ty, tx, 1); 2. If (VjIndex),
2. iPrev Decr (temp1); iNxt Incr (temp1); a. d Dist (VnNxt, VjIndex) ;
3. Stat1 comp (iPrev, iNxt); b. If d < min,
4. if Stat1 == ‘o’, i. min d; Vc j;
a. CritVertxLst (k) [temp1, iPrev, iNxt, lbl, iii. EndVrtx CritVertxLstOpen (Vc, PosI);
Stat1]; iv. OpenSubGraphs (1,OpenSegment) VnIndex;
b. k k + count; lbl lbl + 1; v. CurrentVrtx VnNxt;
iii. case 2: vi. k 2;
1. temp1 Indices (ty, tx, 1); vii. While CurrentVrtx is not equal to EndVrtx.
2. iPrev Decr (temp1); iNxt Incr (temp1); 1. OpenSubGraphs (k, OpenSegment) CurrentVrtx;
3. temp2 Indices (ty, tx, 2); 2. CurrentVrtx Incr (CurrentVrtx);
4. iPrev2 Decr (temp2); iNxt2 Incr (temp2); 3. k k + 1;
5. Stat1 comp (iPrev, iNxt2);
viii. OpenSubGraphs (k, OpenSegment) EndVrtx;
6. Stat2 comp (iPrev2, iNxt);
ix. OpenSegment OpenSegment + 1;
7. if (stat1 == ‘c’) jj (stat2 == ‘c’) ,
x. CritVertxLstOpen (Vc, PosI) 0; CritVertxLstOpen (Vn,
a. CritVertxLst (k) [temp1, iPrev, iNxt2, lbl,
PosI) 0;
Stat1];
6. OpenSegment OpenSegment – 1 (Gives the total number of
b. CritVertxLst (k + 1) [temp2, iPrev2, iNxt, lbl,
open segments).
Stat2];
c. k k + count; lbl lbl + 1;
2.1.3. Algorithm for isolating all closed segments in ClosedSubGraphs
iv. case 3 or 4:
using CritVertxLstClosed
1. For j = 1 to count,
a. temp1 Indices (ty, tx, j);
1. Get traced boundary B and N the number of vertices.
b. iPrev Decr (temp1); iNxt Incr (temp1);
2. Get the list of critical vertices for closed segments CritVertxLst-
c. CritVertxLst (k + j  1) [temp1, iPrev, iNxt,
Closed and their count C.
lbl, 0]; ( Decision regarding o/c still not done,
3. Initialize: ClosedSubGraphs (N, C) 0; (there can be a maxi-
so status = 0)
mum of C closed sub-graphs).
2. temp1 k + count  1;
4. count C; NxtSrch 1; ClosedSegment 1;
3. tempiNxt CritVertxLst (temp1,PosNI); ( for
5. While (count)
performing the cyclic shift)
a. For Vn = NxtSrch to C
4. For j = (temp1  1) to k in decrements of 1,
i. VnIndex CritVertxLstClosed (Vn, PosI);
a. CritVertxLst (j + 1, PosNI) CritVertxLst
ii. if (VnIndex), ( index is not 0, implies not a deleted vertex)
(j, PosNI);
1. CurrentVrtx CritVertxLstClosed (Vn, PosNI);
5. CritVertxLst (k, PosNI) tempiNxt; 2. EndLbl CritVertxLstClosed (Vn, PosLbl);
6. For j = k to temp1, 3. Break the loop;
a. iPrev CritVertxLst (j, PosPI); iNxt b. k 1; CurLbl 0;
CritVertxLst (j, PosNI); c. While CurLbl is not equal to EndLbl.
b. CritVertxLst (j, PosStat) comp (iPrev, iNxt); i. min N + 1;
7. k k + count; lbl lbl + 1; ii. For j = NxtSrch to C
1. VjIndex CritVertxLstClosed (j, PosI);
8. If k == 1,
2. If (VjIndex)
a. CritVertxLstClosed = [1, N, 2, 1, ‘c’];
a. d Dist (CurrentVrtx, VjIndex);
b. CritVertxLstOpen = empty;
b. If d < min,
9. Else,
i. min d; Vc j;
a. From CritVertxLst segregate the entries which corre-
spond to open (indicated by ‘o’) and closed (indicated iii. EndVrtx CritVertxLstClosed (Vc, PosI);
by ‘c’) into CritVertxLstOpen and CritVertxLstClosed iv. While CurrentVrtx is not equal to EndVrtx
respectively. 1. ClosedSubGraphs (k, ClosedSegment) CurrentVrtx;
 N. Narappanawar et al. / Computer Vision and Image Understanding 115 (2011) 1552–1558 1555

2. CurrentVrtx Incr (CurrentVrtx);

3. k k + 1;
v. ClosedSubGraphs (k, ClosedSegment) EndVrtx;
vi. k k + 1;
vii. CurrentVrtx CritVertxLstClosed (Vc, PosNI);
viii. CurLbl CritVertxLstClosed (Vc, PosLbl);
ix. CritVertxLstClosed (Vc, PosI) 0;
x. count count – 1;
d. NxtSrch Vn + 1;
e. ClosedSegment ClosedSegment + 1;
6. ClosedSegment ClosedSegment – 1; (gives the total number
of closed segments).

2.2. An example and analysis Fig. 1. Indices of critical vertices for example test image.

The experiments were carried out on 26 synthetic images. Some

of the test images, along with the number of each type of the ver-
tices, are given in Table 1. Fig. 1 gives further details of the test im-
age at serial 3 of the table. For the test image in Fig. 1, the outputs
CritVertxLstOpen and CritVertxLstClosed are given in Table 2. The
outputs, OpenSubGraphs and ClosedSubGraphs are given in Table
3. The segmented closed and open sub-graphs are given in Fig. 2.
We observe a closed sub-graph at the intersection of ‘‘+’’. This is
expected as all the four vertices form a circuit considering their
3  3 neighborhood. The execution time, for sub-parts of the algo-
rithm coded in MATLAB(R), on system with Intel(R) Core i3 CPU
M350 @ 2.27 GHz with 3 GB RAM, is given in Table 4.
Let No be a vector representing number of vertices of the type
{o1d1, o2d2, o2d3, o3d3, o3d4, o4d4} characterizing the open
boundaries in an image. The execution time of separating open
sub-graphs (Section 2.1.2), will depend on P and on No. The loops
in step 5 and in step 5.c.ii show that the execution time associated
with finding minimum directed distance to locate end points is O
(P2). The execution time associated with data transfer is O (No).
Hence the execution time is O (P2, No).
Let Nc be a vector representing number of vertices of the type
{o1d2, o2d3, o2d4, o3d4} characterizing the closed boundaries in
an image. The execution time of separating closed sub-graphs (Sec-
tion 2.1.3), will depend on C and on Nc. The loops in step 5.a and in
step 5.c.ii show that the execution time associated with finding
minimum directed distance to locate a sub-graph is O (C2). The
execution time associated with data transfer is O (Nc). Hence the
execution time is O (C2, Nc).
For the algorithm sub part that locates critical vertices (Section
2.1.1), the initialization (step 4) is O (N2). However, the associated
time cost is very low. The main time cost is in step 7, for critical
vertex identification and status assignment. Typically, the vertices
with occurrences = 1 or 2 will be predominantly more as can be
seen from Table 1. Rejection of o1d2 and o2d2 vertices in cases 1

Table 1
Some of the images used in experiments along with the number of each type of the vertices.

Sr. No. Image o1d1 o1d2 o2d2 o2d3 o2d4 o3d3 o3d4 o4d4 C P
1. 2 80 19 4 0 0 0 0 4 6

2. 12 0 148 0 0 10 0 0 0 42

3. 3 63 32 5 0 0 0 0 5 8

4. 38 0 28 0 0 36 0 0 0 146

5. 2 178 26 2 2 0 0 0 6 4

6. 8 0 124 0 0 4 0 1 0 24

7. 2 113 114 0 0 0 1 0 1 4

8. 0 285 0 0 5 0 0 0 10 0

9. 48 52 4 48 0 0 0 0 48 96

10. 72 0 37 0 0 0 0 35 0 212

11. 40 95 40 0 0 0 20 0 20 80
1556 N. Narappanawar et al. / Computer Vision and Image Understanding 115 (2011) 1552–1558

Table 2
Output CritVertxLstOpen and CritVertxLstClosed for example image.

CritVertxLstClosed CritVertxLstOpen
Index Previous Next Label Status Index Previous Next Label Status
47 46 124 1 c 123 122 48 1 o
114 113 57 2 c 56 55 115 2 o
57 56 66 3 c 65 64 58 3 o
66 65 105 5 c 61 60 62 4 o
105 104 114 7 c 104 103 67 5 o
85 84 86 6 o
113 112 106 7 o
109 108 110 8 o

Table 3 the analysis, linear regression on Nt and the observed Tt for all
Open and closed sub graphs for example image. the images used in the experiment, was conducted to obtain the
OpenSubGraphs ClosedSubGraphs coefficients {t0, t1, . . . , t8} [23]. The averages of the coefficients for
10 trials are given in Table 5. The coefficient of determination
No Indices No Indices
was found to be 0.999919. A time estimate (Te) was generated
1 123 and 48–56 1 124–140 and 1–47
using Eq. (1). The scatter plot of total time (Tt) verses estimated
2 65 and 58–61 2 57, 66, 105 and 114
3 104 and 67–85 time (Te) along with the trend line is given in Fig. 3. All these
4 113 and 106–109 aspects clearly indicate that Tt is a linear function of Nt.
T e ¼ t 1  o1d1 þ t 2  o1d2 þ t3  o2d2 þ t4  o2d3 þ t 5
 o2d4 þ t6  o3d3 þ t 7  o3d4 þ t 8  o4d4 þ t0 ð1Þ
and 2 will be executed more often. Therefore, case 2 is elaborately
coded. A case with number of vertices with occurrences = 3, com-
parable to that with occurrences = 1 or 2, is shown at serial 4 of 3. Maximum degree of a vertex in a traced boundary
Table 1. For this case, the case 3 will be executed o3d3 times. How-
ever, the ‘count’ for the loops in case 3 or 4 does not exceed 4.
It can be observed from execution time (percentages) given in Proposition. If a boundary is traced using 8-connectivity and is
Table 4 that maximum time is spent in locating the critical vertices. considered as an undirected, connected graph, with pixels as vertices,
In the experiments the minimum is 91% for the image at serial 10 then the degree of a vertex cannot exceed four.
in Table 1. Let Nt be a vector representing number of vertices of all
the eight types {o1d1, o1d2, o2d2, o2d3, o2d4, o3d3, o3d4, o4d4} Proof. Let the traced output be that of an external boundary. The
characterizing the whole boundary in an image. The total execu- proof that follows is also valid for the case that the traced bound-
tion time of the whole algorithm (Tt) is O (Nt). To further support ary is an internal boundary. Let the pixel S, for which the degree is

Fig. 2. Segmented open and closed segments.

Table 4
Execution time in seconds for 5000 repetitions for the images at same serial number as in Table 1.

Sr. No. Critical Vertex Identification Closed sub-graphs Open sub-graphs CVI (%) CSG (%) OSG (%)
(CVI) (CSG) (OSG)
1. 4.61 0.06 0.02 98.31 1.29 0.41
2. 10.21 0.00 0.14 98.68 0.00 1.32
3. 5.08 0.06 0.02 98.31 1.24 0.45
4. 11.15 0.00 0.82 93.15 0.00 6.85
5. 7.83 0.08 0.02 98.75 1.02 0.22
6. 7.98 0.00 0.07 99.13 0.00 0.87
7. 9.37 0.06 0.03 99.13 0.59 0.28
8. 9.61 0.11 0.00 98.85 1.15 0.00
9. 19.15 0.36 0.35 96.41 1.82 1.77
10. 17.00 0.00 1.64 91.22 0.00 8.78
11. 12.95 0.14 0.28 96.86 1.03 2.11
 N. Narappanawar et al. / Computer Vision and Image Understanding 115 (2011) 1552–1558 1557

Table 5
Coefficients for generating time estimate (Te) for 5000 repetitions.

Coefficient t8 t7 t6 t5 t4 t3 t2 t1 t0
Value 0.2310 0.1884 0.1614 0.2511 0.2507 0.0494 0.0288 0.1162 0.2686

H G F H G F H G F
A S E A S E A S E
B C D B C D B C D
(a) (b) (c)
Fig. 5. Possible combinations of neighbors (a) (2 direct, 2 indirect), (b) (1 direct, 3
indirect) and (c) (0 direct, 4 indirect). The vertices shaded ‘‘gray’’ are the vertices of
an external boundary.

Fig. 3. Total execution time (Tt) for 5000 repetitions in seconds, verses estimated
time (Te).

being considered, be the vertex of a connected planar graph.

Consider 3  3 neighborhood of a vertex S given in Fig. 4. The
vertices {A, C, E, G} are the direct neighbors and the vertices
{B, D, F, H} are the indirect neighbors. Let the degree of S be four.
Hence, we consider four vertices in the neighborhood of S. The
possible combinations of number of (direct, indirect) vertices can
be {(4, 0), (3, 1), (2, 2), (1, 3), (0, 4)}. The corresponding possibilities
for the combinations are {1, 16, 36, 16, 1}. Fig. 6. Sample results on handwritten number ‘8’, columns are indicated in
brackets: Input images (1, 5), corresponding thinned and traced images (2, 6),
1. Valid edge condition: An edge between a vertex X and S would corresponding segmented boundaries (3, 4, 7, 8). The results show only those open
contribute to the degree of S if the tracing either reaches S from or closed segments, which are of size greater than 5% of traced boundary.

X or reaches X from S.
2. In case of the combination (4, 0): S is not a boundary pixel.
3. In case of the combination (3, 1): At least one of the vertices in
the neighborhood of S will not satisfy valid edge condition.
Hence degree of S will be less than four.
4. An example figures for the combinations {(2, 2), (1, 3), (0, 4)} are
given in Fig. 5. The degree of vertex S can be four or less depend-
ing on how the neighboring vertices are further connected.
5. To make degree of vertex S as 5, 6, 7 or 8, we will have to add a
vertex or vertices in the neighborhood of S.
6. After addition of a vertex, at least one of the vertices in the
neighborhood of S will not satisfy valid edge condition. Thus
degree of S will remain at four or will reduce.
Therefore considering an undirected graph degree of S does not
exceed 4.
This completes the proof. h
For the proposition, an elaborate proof considering the inci-
dences from direct/indirect neighbors, S being a part of open
and/or closed boundary, can also be given.
4. Results and conclusions
The algorithm presented in this paper requires a traced bound-
ary as an input. It gives open and closed sub-sections as output.
The number of open and closed sub-sections in an object can them-
selves be a feature for object recognition. The segmented bound-
aries (or strokes) can be further used to characterize an object in
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) [24–26]. The outputs as
presented in Table 3 were validated manually for 26 images used
in the experiments and were found to be correct in all the cases.
The algorithm was also tested using visual inspection on hand
written text. The testing was done on randomly selected images
from different databases. Over 100 images selected from [27] and
20 images for each number (from 0 to 9) from [28] were used.
Some of the thinned, traced and then segmented images of hand

H G F
A S E
B C D
Fig. 4. 3  3 neighborhood of S.
1558 N. Narappanawar et al. / Computer Vision and Image Understanding 115 (2011) 1552–1558
written number eight are shown in Fig. 6. The analysis of the
proposed algorithm (Section 2.2) clearly shows that maximum
time is being spent in generating a list of critical vertices. The exe-
cution time of the whole algorithm is O (Nt).
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Dr. Amol V Patil, Solutions
Architect at iGATE Patni Computers Ltd, India for his help in the
development of paper. We also thank the anonymous reviewers
for their valuable comments.
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Nitin L Narappanawar completed B.E. (Hons.) in Elec-
trical & Electronics from Birla Institute of Technology
and Science, Pilani, India, in the year 1981. Soon after
that he joined the industry. His industrial experience
spans more than 20 years, covering innovative product
developments in various Technology Areas. From the
year 2002 he is in the Academics. His current research
interest is computer vision and pattern recognition.
B Madhusudan Rao completed his masters in Advanced
Embedded Systems Design in 2008 from International
Institute of Information Technology (I2IT) Pune, India
and B.E. in Electronics and Communication from PDA,
College of Engineering, Gulbarga, India, in 2005. He
worked at I2IT, Pune for more than two years as a Sr.
Research Assistant. He is currently working as a Soft-
ware Engineer at iGATE Patni Computer Systems Ltd,
India belonging to a team responsible for design and
development of algorithms for medical imaging. His
area of interest includes computer vision, pattern rec-
ognition, medical imaging and embedded systems.
M. A. Joshi received Ph.D. in electronics engineering
from Pune University, in 2000 and MS.c(Tech) by
research Manchester UK in 1990. She is currently
working as Prof. (Electronic) & Dean R&D at the
Department of E& TC, College of Engineering Pune. Her
area of interest includes Image compression, Pattern
recognition techniques, and Quality measures for com-
pressed images.