The ``distance map'' of a point pattern $X$ is the function
$f$ whose value f(u)
is defined for any two-dimensional
location $u$ as the shortest distance from $u$ to $X$. This function computes the distance map of the point pattern X
and returns the distance map as a pixel image. The greyscale value
at a pixel $u$ equals the distance from $u$ to the nearest
point of the pattern X
.
Additionally, the return value
has two attributes, "index"
and "bdry"
, which are
also pixel images. The grey values in "bdry"
give the
distance from each pixel to the bounding rectangle of the image.
The grey values in "index"
are integers identifying which
point of X
is closest.
This is a method for the generic function distmap
.
Note that this function gives the distance from the
centre of each pixel to the nearest data point.
To compute the exact distance from a given spatial location
to the nearest data point in X
, use distfun
or
nncross
.