An Arithmetical Characterization of the Convex Hull of Digital Straight Segments
Résumé
In this paper, we arithmetically describe the convex hull of
a digital straight segment by three recurrence relations. This charac-
terization gives new insights into the combinatorial structure of digital
straight segments of arbitrary length and intercept. It also leads to two
on-line algorithms that computes a part of the convex hull of a given
digital straight segment. They both run in constant space and constant
time per vertex. Due to symmetries, they are enough to reconstruct
the whole convex hull. Moreover, these two algorithms provide efficient
solutions to the subsegment problem, which consists in computing the
minimal parameters of a segment of a digital straight line of known pa-
rameters. Due to its close link to the subsegment problem, this work
helps to understand the effects of length and intercept on segments of
parallel digital straight lines, such as sections of a piece of digital plane
or sub-sampled digital straight segments.