Suggestions to Compute the Intersetions of Multiple Convex 2D Polygons - c++

Question

I am writing this question fishing for any state-of-the-art software or methods that can quickly compute the intersection of N 2D polygons (the convex hulls of projected convex polyhedrons), and M 2D polygons where typically N >> M. N may be in the order or at least 1M polygons and N in the order 50k. I've searched for some time now, but I keep coming up with the same answer shown below.
Use boost and a loop to
compute the projection of the polyhedron (not the bottleneck)
compute the convex hull of said polyhedron (bottleneck)
compute the intersection of the projected polyhedron and existing 2D polygon (major bottleneck).
This loop is repeated NK times where typically K << M, and K is the average number of 2D polygons intersecting a single projected polyhedron. This is done to reduce the number of computations.
The problem with this is that if I have N=262144 and M=19456 it takes about 129 seconds (when multithreaded by polyhedron), and this must be done about 300 times. Ideally, I would like to reduce the computation time to about 1 second for the above sizes, so I was wondering if someone could help point to some software or literature that could improve efficiency.
[EDIT]
#sehe's request I'm posting the most relevant parts of the code. I haven't compiled it, so this is just to get the gist... this code assumes, there are voxels and pixels, but the shapes can be anything. The order of the points in the grid can be any, but the indices of where the points reside in the grid are the same.
#include <boost/geometry/geometry.hpp>
#include <boost/geometry/geometries/point.hpp>
#include <boost/geometry/geometries/ring.hpp>
const std::size_t Dimension = 2;
typedef boost::geometry::model::point<float, Dimension, boost::geometry::cs::cartesian> point_2d;
typedef boost::geometry::model::polygon<point_2d, false /* is cw */, true /* closed */> polygon_2d;
typedef boost::geometry::model::box<point_2d> box_2d;
std::vector<float> getOverlaps(std::vector<float> & projected_grid_vx, // projected voxels
std::vector<float> & pixel_grid_vx, // pixels
std::vector<int> & projected_grid_m, // number of voxels in each dimension
std::vector<int> & pixel_grid_m, // number of pixels in each dimension
std::vector<float> & pixel_grid_omega, // size of the pixel grid in cm
int projected_grid_size, // total number of voxels
int pixel_grid_size) { // total number of pixels
std::vector<float> overlaps(projected_grid_size * pixel_grid_size);
std::vector<float> h(pixel_grid_m.size());
for(int d=0; d < pixel_grid_m.size(); d++) {
h[d] = (pixel_grid_omega[2*d+1] - pixel_grid_omega[2*d]) / pixel_grid_m[d];
}
for(int i=0; i < projected_grid_size; i++){
std::vector<float> point_indices(8);
point_indices[0] = i;
point_indices[1] = i + 1;
point_indices[2] = i + projected_grid_m[0];
point_indices[3] = i + projected_grid_m[0] + 1;
point_indices[4] = i + projected_grid_m[0] * projected_grid_m[1];
point_indices[5] = i + projected_grid_m[0] * projected_grid_m[1] + 1;
point_indices[6] = i + (projected_grid_m[1] + 1) * projected_grid_m[0];
point_indices[7] = i + (projected_grid_m[1] + 1) * projected_grid_m[0] + 1;
std::vector<float> vx_corners(8 * projected_grid_m.size());
for(int vn = 0; vn < 8; vn++) {
for(int d = 0; d < projected_grid_m.size(); d++) {
vx_corners[vn + d * 8] = projected_grid_vx[point_indices[vn] + d * projeted_grid_size];
}
}
polygon_2d proj_voxel;
for(int vn = 0; vn < 8; vn++) {
point_2d poly_pt(vx_corners[2 * vn], vx_corners[2 * vn + 1]);
boost::geometry::append(proj_voxel, poly_pt);
}
boost::geometry::correct(proj_voxel);
polygon_2d proj_voxel_hull;
boost::geometry::convex_hull(proj_voxel, proj_voxel_hull);
box_2d bb_proj_vox;
boost::geometry::envelope(proj_voxel_hull, bb_proj_vox);
point_2d min_pt = bb_proj_vox.min_corner();
point_2d max_pt = bb_proj_vox.max_corner();
// then get min and max indices of intersecting bins
std::vector<float> min_idx(projected_grid_m.size() - 1),
max_idx(projected_grid_m.size() - 1);
// compute min and max indices of incidence on the pixel grid
// this is easy assuming you have a regular grid of pixels
min_idx[0] = std::min( (float) std::max( std::floor((min_pt.get<0>() - pixel_grid_omega[0]) / h[0] - 0.5 ), 0.), pixel_grid_m[0]-1);
min_idx[1] = std::min( (float) std::max( std::floor((min_pt.get<1>() - pixel_grid_omega[2]) / h[1] - 0.5 ), 0.), pixel_grid_m[1]-1);
max_idx[0] = std::min( (float) std::max( std::floor((max_pt.get<0>() - pixel_grid_omega[0]) / h[0] + 0.5 ), 0.), pixel_grid__m[0]-1);
max_idx[1] = std::min( (float) std::max( std::floor((max_pt.get<1>() - pixel_grid_omega[2]) / h[1] + 0.5 ), 0.), pixel_grid_m[1]-1);
// iterate only over pixels which intersect the projected voxel
for(int iy = min_idx[1]; iy <= max_idx[1]; iy++) {
for(int ix = min_idx[0]; ix <= max_idx[0]; ix++) {
int idx = ix + iy * pixel_grid_size[0]; // `first' index of pixel corner point
polygon_2d pix_poly;
for(int pn = 0; pn < 4; pn++) {
point_2d pix_corner_pt(
pixel_grid_vx[idx + pn % 2 + (pn / 2) * pixel_grid_m[0]],
pixel_grid_vx[idx + pn % 2 + (pn / 2) * pixel_grid_m[0] + pixel_grid_size]
);
boost::geometry::append(pix_poly, pix_corner_pt);
}
boost::geometry::correct( pix_poly );
//make this into a convex hull since the order of the point may be any
polygon_2d pix_hull;
boost::geometry::convex_hull(pix_poly, pix_hull);
// on to perform intersection
std::vector<polygon_2d> vox_pix_ints;
polygon_2d vox_pix_int;
try {
boost::geometry::intersection(proj_voxel_hull, pix_hull, vox_pix_ints);
} catch ( std::exception e ) {
// skip since these may coincide at a point or line
continue;
}
// both are convex so only one intersection expected
vox_pix_int = vox_pix_ints[0];
overlaps[i + idx * projected_grid_size] = boost::geometry::area(vox_pix_int);
}
} // end intersection for
} //end projected_voxel for
return overlaps;
}

Answer 1

You could create the ratio of polygon to bounding box:
This could be done computationally once to arrive at an avgerage poly area to BB ratio R constant.
Or you could do it with geometry using a circle bounded by its BB Since your using only projected polyhedron:
R = 0.0;
count = 0;
for (each poly) {
count++;
R += polyArea / itsBoundingBoxArea;
}
R = R/count;
Then calculate the summation of intersection of bounding boxes.
Sbb = 0.0;
for (box1, box2 where box1.isIntersecting(box2)) {
Sbb += box1.intersect(box2);
}
Then:
Approximation = R * Sbb
All of this would not work if concave polys were allowed. Because a concave poly can occupy less than 1% of it's bounding box. You will still have to find the convex hull.
Alternatively, If you can find the polygons area quicker than its hull, you could use the actual computed average poly area. This would give you a decent approximation as well while avoiding both poly intersection and wrapping.

Answer 2

Hm, the problem seems similar to doing "collision-detection" i game-engines. Or "potentially visible sets".
While I don't know much about the current state-of-the-art, i remember an optimization was to enclose objects in spheres, since checking overlaps between spheres (or circles in 2D) is really cheap.
In order to speed-up checks for collisions, objects were often put into search-structures (e.g. a sphere-tree (circle-tree in 2D case)). Basically organizing the space into a hierarchical structure, to make queries for overlaps fast.
So basically my suggestion boils down to: Try looking at algorithms for collision-detection i game-engines.

Answer 3

Assumption
I'm assuming that you mean "intersections" and not intersection. Moreover, It is not the expected use case that most of the individual polys from M and N will overlap at the same time. If this assumption is true then:
Answer
The way this is done with 2D game engines is by having a scene graph where every object has a bounding box. Then place all the the polygons into a node in an quadtree according to their location determined by bounding box. Then the task becomes parallel because each node can be processed separately for intersection.
Here is the wiki for quadtree:
Quadtree Wiki
An octree could be used when in 3D.
It actually doesn't even have to be a octree. You could get the same results with any space partition. You could find the maximum separation of polys (lets call it S). And create say S/10 space partitions. Then you would have 10 separate spaces to execute in parallel. Not only would it be concurrent, but It would no longer be M * N time since not every poly must be compared against every other poly.