Chain Code for 2D Line

Difficulty Level : Medium
Last Updated : 15 Jul, 2018

Chain code is a lossless compression technique used for representing an object in images. The co-ordinates of any continuous boundary of an object can be represented as a string of numbers where each number represents a particular direction in which the next point on the connected line is present. One point is taken as the reference/starting point and on plotting the points generated from the chain, the original figure can be re-drawn.

This article describes how to generate a 8-neighbourhood chain code of a 2-D straight line. In a rectangular grid, a point can have at most 8 surrounding points as shown below. The next point on the line has to be one of these 8 surrounding points. Each direction is assigned a code. Using this code we can find out which of the surrounding point should be plotted next.

8-Neighbourhood connected system

The chain codes could be generated by using conditional statements for each direction but it becomes very tedious to describe for systems having large number of directions(3-D grids can have up to 26 directions). Instead we use a hash function. The difference in X( $dx$ ) and Y( $dy$ ) co-ordinates of two successive points are calculated and hashed to generate the key for the chain code between the two points.

Chain code list: $[5, 6, 7, 4, -1, 0, 3, 2, 1]$

Hash function: $C(dx, dy) = 3dy + dx + 4$

Hash table:-

$dx$	$dy$	$C(dx, dy)$	$chainCode[C]$
1	0	5	0
1	1	8	1
0	1	7	2
-1	1	6	3
-1	0	3	4
-1	-1	0	5
0	-1	1	6
1	-1	2	7

The function does not generate the value 4 so a dummy value is stored there.

Examples:

Input : (2, -3), (-4, 2)
Output : Chain code for the straight line from (2, -3) to (-4, 2) is 333433


Input : (-7, -4), (9, 3)
Output : Chain code for the straight line from (-7, -4) to (9, 3) is 0101010100101010

Python3

# Python3 code for generating 8-neighbourhood chain
# code for a 2-D line
  
codeList = [5, 6, 7, 4, -1, 0, 3, 2, 1]
  
# This function generates the chaincode 
# for transition between two neighbour points
def getChainCode(x1, y1, x2, y2):
    dx = x2 - x1
    dy = y2 - y1
    hashKey = 3 * dy + dx + 4
    return codeList[hashKey]
  
'''This function generates the list of 
chaincodes for given list of points'''
def generateChainCode(ListOfPoints):
    chainCode = []
    for i in range(len(ListOfPoints) - 1):
        a = ListOfPoints[i]
        b = ListOfPoints[i + 1]
        chainCode.append(getChainCode(a[0], a[1], b[0], b[1]))
    return chainCode
  
  
'''This function generates the list of points for 
a staright line using Bresenham's Algorithm'''
def Bresenham2D(x1, y1, x2, y2):
    ListOfPoints = []
    ListOfPoints.append([x1, y1])
    xdif = x2 - x1
    ydif = y2 - y1
    dx = abs(xdif)
    dy = abs(ydif)
    if(xdif > 0):
        xs = 1
    else:
        xs = -1
    if (ydif > 0):
        ys = 1
    else:
        ys = -1
    if (dx > dy):
  
        # Driving axis is the X-axis
        p = 2 * dy - dx
        while (x1 != x2):
            x1 += xs
            if (p >= 0):
                y1 += ys
                p -= 2 * dx
            p += 2 * dy
            ListOfPoints.append([x1, y1])
    else:
  
        # Driving axis is the Y-axis
        p = 2 * dx-dy
        while(y1 != y2):
            y1 += ys
            if (p >= 0):
                x1 += xs
                p -= 2 * dy
            p += 2 * dx
            ListOfPoints.append([x1, y1])
    return ListOfPoints
  
def DriverFunction():
    (x1, y1) = (-9, -3)
    (x2, y2) = (10, 1)
    ListOfPoints = Bresenham2D(x1, y1, x2, y2)
    chainCode = generateChainCode(ListOfPoints)
    chainCodeString = "".join(str(e) for e in chainCode)
    print ('Chain code for the straight line from', (x1, y1), 
            'to', (x2, y2), 'is', chainCodeString)
  
DriverFunction()

Output:

Chain code for the straight line from (-9, -3) to (10, 1) is 0010000100010000100

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