Linear-Region-Based Contour Tracking for Edge Images

This work presents the Linear-Region-Based Contour Tracking (LRCT) method for extracting external contours in images, designed to achieve an accurate and efficient description of shapes, particularly useful for archaeological materials with irregular geometries. The approach treats the contour as a discrete signal and analyzes image regions containing edge segments. From these regions, a local linear model is estimated to guide the selection and chaining of representative pixels, yielding a continuous perimeter trajectory. This strategy reduces the amount of data required to describe the contour without compromising shape fidelity. As a case study, the method was applied to images of replicas of archaeological materials exhibiting substantial variations in color and morphology. The results show that the obtained trajectories are comparable in quality to those obtained using classical pipelines based on Canny edge detection followed by Moore tracing, while providing more compact representations well suited for subsequent analyses. Consequently, the method offers an efficient and reproducible alternative for documentation, recording, and morphological comparison, strengthening data-driven approaches in archaeological research.