Shape encoding for edge map image compression

A method for the efficient encoding and decoding of a shape with application to edge map image compression is proposed. The method relies on the modeling of the manifold of a shape by line segments. Then, encoding is performed by collecting the characteristic features of each line segment, namely the starting and ending points and the number of points contributing to the computation of the corresponding segment. The reconstruction of the shape may be obtained by uniform sampling of points from each line segment computed in the encoding process. Experimental analysis demonstrates that in case of employing a robust and efficient line segment detection algorithm, the proposed encoding/decoding scheme exhibits high compression rates, compared to widely used lossless compression methods, while providing low distortion values.