Efficient Computation of the Large Inductive Dimension Using Order- and Graph-theoretic Means

Finite topological spaces and their dimensions have many applications in computer science, e.g., in digital topology, computer graphics and the analysis and synthesis of digital images. Georgiou et. al. [11] provided a polynomial algorithm for computing the covering dimension dim(X; 𝒯) of a finite topological space (X; 𝒯). In addition, they asked whether algorithms of the same complexity for computing the small inductive dimension ind(X; 𝒯) and the large inductive dimension Ind(X; 𝒯) can be developed. The first problem was solved in a previous paper [4]. Using results of the that paper, we also solve the second problem in this paper. We present a polynomial algorithm for Ind(X; 𝒯), so that there are now efficient algorithms for the three most important notions of a dimension in topology. Our solution reduces the computation of Ind(X; 𝒯), where the specialisation pre-order of (X; 𝒯) is taken as input, to the computation of the maximal height of a specific class of directed binary trees within the partially ordered set. For the latter an efficient algorithm is presented that is based on order- and graph-theoretic ideas. Also refinements and variants of the algorithm are discussed.