Optimizing connected component labeling algorithms

Conference · Sun Jan 16 04:00:00 EST 2005

OSTI ID:887435

Wu, Kesheng; Otoo, Ekow; Shoshani, Arie

This paper presents two new strategies that can be used to greatly improve the speed of connected component labeling algorithms. To assign a label to a new object, most connected component labeling algorithms use a scanning step that examines some of its neighbors. The first strategy exploits the dependencies among them to reduce the number of neighbors examined. When considering 8-connected components in a 2D image, this can reduce the number of neighbors examined from four to one in many cases. The second strategy uses an array to store the equivalence information among the labels. This replaces the pointer based rooted trees used to store the same equivalence information. It reduces the memory required and also produces consecutive final labels. Using an array instead of the pointer based rooted trees speeds up the connected component labeling algorithms by a factor of 5 {approx} 100 in our tests on random binary images.

• Research Organization: Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley NationalLaboratory, Berkeley, CA (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Director. Office of Science. Office of AdvancedScientific Computing Research
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-05CH11231
• OSTI ID: 887435
• Report Number(s): LBNL--56864; BnR: KJ0101030
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
ALGORITHMS
IMAGE PROCESSING
MEMORY MANAGEMENT
PATTERN RECOGNITION
connected component labeling pattern recognition segmentationunion-find