Fast Euclidean distance mapping using ordered propagation

A method of the Euclidean distance map generation is proposed which reduces the number of multiplication operations used to compute distances. This method belongs to a class of the ordered propagation algorithms using masks whose shape depends on a direction of the distance value propagation. To obtain Euclidean distances, we apply two non-Euclidean transforms (city block and chessboard) simultaneously so that our approach is faster than other techniques because it uses only additions instead of multiplication operations when labeling the distance map. Experiments confirm a correctness of our approach and memory requirements for it do not exceed those for other transforms with the ordered propagation.