An examination of algorithms for the detection of critical points on digital cartographic lines

The detection of critical points is an important issue in many disciplines such as computer vision, image processing, pattern recognition, computer graphics and cartography/GIS. Numerous algorithms have been developed since the late 1960s. These algorithms can be classified into three major groups, i.e. corner detection, polygonal approximation, and a hybrid technique which is a combination for the first two. This paper aims to provide a review, and to examine the advantages and disadvantages, of these various algorithms in all of these three categories.