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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 2219–2225Cite as

Quadtrees (and Family)

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Synonyms

Hierarchical spatial indexes; Hierarchical regular-decomposition structures; Quadtree variations

Definition

In general, the term Quadtree refers to a class of representations of geometric entities (such as points, line segments, polygons, regions) in a space of two (or more) dimensions, that recursively decompose the space containing these entities into blocks until the data in each block satisfy some condition (with respect, for example, to the block size, the number of block entities, the characteristics of the block entities, etc.).

In a more restricted sense, the term Quadtree (Octree) refers to a tree data-structure in which each internal node has four (eight) children and is used for the representation of geometric entities in a two (three) dimensional space. The root of the tree represents the whole space/region. Each child of a node represents a subregion of the subregion of its parent. The subregions of the siblings constitute a partition of the parent’s regions.

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Recommended Reading

  1. Brabec F. and Samet H. Spatial Index Demos. http://donar.umiacs.umd.edu/quadtree/index.html

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  14. Vassilakopoulos M. and Manolopoulos Y. External balanced regular (x-BR) trees: New structures for very large spatial databases. In Advances in Informatics, D.I. Fotiadis, S.D. Nikolopoulos. World Scientific, 2000, pp. 324–333.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Central Greece, Lamia, Greece

    Michael Vassilakopoulos

  2. University of the Aegean, Salmos, Greece

    Theodoros tzouramanis

Authors
  1. Michael Vassilakopoulos
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  2. Theodoros tzouramanis
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Vassilakopoulos, M., tzouramanis, T. (2009). Quadtrees (and Family). In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_286

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