We develop a multiresolution approach to the problem of polygonal curve
approximation. We show theoretically and experimentally that, if the
simplification algorithm A used between any two successive levels of resolution
satisfies some conditions, the multiresolution algorithm MR will have a
complexity lower than the complexity of A. In particular, we show that if A has
a O(N2/K) complexity (the complexity of a reduced search dynamic solution
approach), where N and K are respectively the initial and the final number of
segments, the complexity of MR is in O(N).We experimentally compare the
outcomes of MR with those of the optimal "full search" dynamic programming
solution and of classical merge and split approaches. The experimental
evaluations confirm the theoretical derivations and show that the proposed
approach evaluated on 2D coastal maps either shows a lower complexity or
provides polygonal approximations closer to the initial curves.Comment: 12 pages + figure