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A modified Bezier curve technique for automatic reconstruction of broken contour lines extracted from a poor-quality topographic map

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Abstract

The various essential morphological land features are represented in a scale-governed map called a topographic sheet. One of the crucial features presented in the topographic sheet often used in Geographical Information System (GIS) based applications is contour lines. Contour lines are non-intersecting lines formed after joining points which are at the same elevation from a given reference point. To elaborate on contour lines, these lines may be of different types, dictated by various geographical landforms such as enclosures (such as lakes, glaciers, etc.), linear features (such as drainage networks, geomorphological landscape. Etc.), islands, eyes and many more. A suitable purpose-specific digitization process is to be implemented for extracting the identified features for use in geographical applications. It can be achieved either through a traditional manual digitization approach or a computer-aided semi-automatic or fully-automatic digitization process may be conceived leveraging advancement in technological support. The manual approach demands considerable effort, execution time, digitization capabilities and attention making it relatively ineffective and inefficient. On the contrary, automatic digitization calls for greater reliance on color segmentation techniques which if implemented incorrectly or imprecisely, the quality of the result will be tremendously compromised. One of the pertinent problems often observed in the segmented image is the loss of continuity in contour lines. This may be circumstantially due to overlapping features, improper segmentation, incomplete information content, incomplete information extraction and the presence of additional details like elevation values. The solution to the identified problem should be motivated toward designing an integrity-preserving reconnection mechanism that is apt, computationally simple and effective. Therefore, this research initiative is motivated towards the conception and implementation of a technique for reconnection of broken contour lines to facilitate continuity of contour lines relying on concepts such as the Sign of Gradient (SG), Euclidean Distance (ED) and modified Bezier Curve (BC) drawing technique.

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The datasets generated used during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of CSE, Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology, SMU, Gangtok, Sikkim, India

    Ashis Pradhan

  2. Department of Computer Application, Sikkim University, Gangtok, Sikkim, India

    Mohan P. Pradhan

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  1. Ashis Pradhan
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  2. Mohan P. Pradhan
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Correspondence to Ashis Pradhan.

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Pradhan, A., Pradhan, M.P. A modified Bezier curve technique for automatic reconstruction of broken contour lines extracted from a poor-quality topographic map. Multimed Tools Appl 82, 18299–18325 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-022-13912-x

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