Methods for hierarchical analysis of concavities

Presents an iterative parallel procedure for computing concavity trees of a digital shape in a multi-resolution structure. The pattern is, at all resolution levels, covered by an almost convex polygon, closely fitting the pattern itself. When the polygons have been created, a hierarchical structure is built, which points out the relations among the concavities at different resolution levels. Also some properties characterizing the added regions are computed. On the highest resolution level, a meta-concavity tree is built up. This tree can be used to analyse and hierarchically rank the shape concavities