A novel bit-quad-based Euler number computing algorithm

The Euler number of a binary image is an important topological property in computer vision and pattern recognition. This paper proposes a novel bit-quad-based Euler number computing algorithm. Based on graph theory and analysis on bit-quad patterns, our algorithm only needs to count two bit-quad patterns. Moreover, by use of the information obtained during processing the previous bit-quad, the average number of pixels to be checked for processing a bit-quad is only 1.75. Experimental results demonstrated that our method outperforms significantly conventional Euler number computing algorithms.