Adjacency detection using quadcodes

A method is presented for determining whether two given regions are adjacent, and for finding all the neighbors of different sizes for a given region. Regions are defined as elementary squares of any size. In a companion paper [2], we introduce the quadcode and discuss its use in representing geometric concepts in the coded image, such as location, distance, and adjacency. In this paper we give a further discussion of adjacency in terms of quadcodes. Gargantini [1] discussed adjacency detection using linear quadtrees. Her discussion was applied to pixels, and a procedure was given to find a pixel's southern neighbor only. This paper considers elementary squares of any size, and gives procedures for both aspects of the problem: for determining whether two given regions are adjacent, and for finding all the neighbors of different sizes for a given region.