Parallel Search Algorithm for the Detection of Irregular Structures

Introduction The interest in this type of search algorithms originates from the so-called Cluster Algorithm, a non-local update procedure in Monte Carlo simulations of spin models [1,2]. The goal of Monte Carlo simulations of spin models is to generate configurations of spins, typical of statistical equilibrium and measure physical observables on this ensemble of configurations. In the cluster algorithm, different points of a mesh are connected with one another according to a certain rule, and the most CPU-time consuming task is to find the connectivity structure, i.e. to determine which points are assigned to which clusters. Another application of these methods is the region growing technique for image segmentation. This is a process in which pixels or regions are merged to form larger regions taking into account some homogeneity criterion that must be fulfilled (see [3] and references therein). The region growing problem can be translated to a weighted, undi