Boundary enclosing a given set of points

Question

I am having a bit of a problem with an algorithm that I am currently using. I wanted it to make a boundary.

Here is an example of the current behavior:

Answer 1

I would use a different approach to solve this problem. Since we are working with a 2-D set of points, it is straightforward to compute the bounding rectangle of the points’ region. Then I would divide this rectangle into “cells” by horizontal and vertical lines, and for each cell simply count the number of pixels located within its bounds. Since each cell can have only 4 adjacent cells (adjacent by cell sides), then the boundary cells would be the ones that have at least one empty adjacent cell or have a cell side located at the bounding rectangle boundary. Then the boundary would be constructed along boundary cell sides. The boundary would look like a “staircase”, but choosing a smaller cell size would improve the result. As a matter of fact, the cell size should be determined experimentally; it could not be too small, otherwise inside the region may appear empty cells. An average distance between the points could be used as a lower boundary of the cell size.