An efficient spatial access method for spatial images containing multiple non-overlapping features

In this paper we propose and analyze a new spatial access method, namely the S*-tree, for the efficient secondary memory encoding and manipulation of images containing multiple non-overlapping features (i.e., coloured images). The S*-tree is based on a non-straightforward and space efficient extension to coloured images of its precursor, namely the S+-tree, which was explicitly designed for binary images. To assess experimentally the qualities of the S*-tree, we test it against the HL-quadtree, a previous spatial access method for coloured images, which is known to be space and time efficient. Our experiments show that the S*-tree reaches up to a 75% of space saving, and performs constantly less I/O accesses than the HL-quadtree in solving classical window queries. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.