# Largest square in a binary matrix

## Introduction

Imagine you are given a black and white image represented as a boolean matrix of size $$N\times M$$ where $$0$$ and $$1$$ in the matrix correspond to a black and a white pixel respectively. Such images are more common then may be expected as they are often the output of digital image processing algorithms such as masking or thresholding. Further analysis this kind of image often requires identifying homogeneous portions of the image. The problem described in this chapter deals with a simple type of image processing algorithm to determine the size of the largest square area of white pixels of a binary bitmap. We will walk through a number of solutions, starting from a naive brute-force one and ultimately moving to a more sophisticated, more complex and definitely more efficient one.

## Problem statement

Given a 2D boolean matrix $$M$$, return the area of the largest square containing only one cell.

Given the following matrix the function returns $$9$$. The largest square has side length of $$3$$ and the coordinates of the top-left corner are $$(2,1)$$. Cells belonging to the largest square are highlighted.

0 0 1 1 1
0 0 1 1 0
0 1 1 1 0
1 1 1 1 0
1 1 1 1 0

Given the following matrix the function returns $$4$$. The side of the largest square is $$2$$ and the top-left coordinates are $$(2,2)$$. Cells belonging to the largest square are highlighted.

1 0 1 0 0
1 0 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 0 0 1 0

## Discussion

In the next section we will analyze a number of possible approaches to this problem. We start by looking at a few brute-force approaches so to then move towards more elaborate and more time and space efficient dynamic programming solutions

### Brute-force

#### Incremental side

The first brute-force approach consists of trying to find the largest square made entirely of set (i.e. holding a value of $$1$$) cells by visiting each set cell and treating it as if it was the top-left corner of a square. Given that calculating the largest square having that cell as the top-left corner is easy the answer to the problem is just the largest value over all the set cells in the matrix. In order to find out what the value of the largest square having cell $$(x,y)$$ as the top-left corner we can try to build squares of incrementally larger sides around it, starting from side length $$1$$. At first we try to build a square of size $$1$$. If that is possible we try size $$2$$, then $$3$$, and so on, until it is impossible or we hit the boundaries of the matrix. The answer for the cell $$(x,y)$$ is the last value for a side for which we were able to construct a square. Consider for example Figure 31.1 where, in order to find the value of the largest square that can be built from cell $$(0,1)$$, all squares highlighted have to be fully checked. This approach is clearly correct because eventually we find all squares in the matrix, and it has a complexity of (assuming, with no loss in generality, $$N \leq M$$) $$O(N^4M)$$. This is because there are $$O(NM)$$ possible starting point for a square, $$O(N)$$ possible values for the side value and checking whether a square is valid costs $$O(N^2)$$ (all cells in the square needs to be checked). A possible implementation of this idea is shown in the Listing [list:square_in_matrix:bruteforce1].

Listing 1: Brute force soltuion solution to the \textit{square in matrix} problem using incremental side probing.

[[nodiscard]] int largerSquareFrom(
const vector<vector<int>>& matrix,
const std::pair<size_t, size_t>& top_left_corner,
const size_t rows,
const size_t cols)
{
const auto [x, y] = top_left_corner;

int k     = 0;
bool good = true;
while (good && ((x + k) < rows) && ((y + k) < cols))
{
for (size_t i = x; good && i <= x + k; i++)
{
for (size_t j = y; good && j <= y + k; j++)
{
if (!matrix[i][j])
{
return k;
}
}
}
++k;
}
return k;
}

const vector<vector<int>>& matrix)
{
if (matrix.size() <= 0 || matrix[0].size() <= 0)
return 0;

const auto rows = matrix.size();
const auto cols = matrix[0].size();
int ans         = 0;
for (size_t i = 0; i < rows; i++)
for (size_t j = 0; j < cols; j++)
if (matrix[i][j])
ans = std::max(ans, largerSquareFrom(matrix, {i, j}, rows, cols));

return ans * ans;
}

[fig:square_in_matrix:squa_matrix_incremental]

#### Walking diagonally

The idea presented in Section 31.2.1.1 can be significantly improved by realising it is not really necessary to check, given a cell $$(x,y)$$, squares of all possible side lengths having it as the top left corner fully and conscecutively. The idea is that we can walk diagonally (towards the bottom-right cell) from a cell $$(x,y)$$ (by incrementing both $$x$$ and $$y$$) and, for every step $$i$$ we take, we check whether all the elements to the left of $$(x+i, y+i)$$ and to the right of $$y$$ are set and also whether all the cells in the columns above $$(x+i, y+i)$$ and below the cell $$(x,y+i)$$ are set (see Figure [fig:square_in_matrix:squa_matrix_diagonal]). If both conditions are true it means that we can construct a square of side $$i$$. We can then proceed one step further until a $$0$$ is found among the checked cells on the left or above of $$(x,y)$$. If we were able to perform $$t$$ diagonal steps, it means we have found out that the largest square having $$(x,y)$$ as the top-left corner has an area of $$t^2$$. The final answer is the largest value we calculated this way across all cells that are set. See Figure [fig:square_in_matrix:squa_matrix_diagonal] where the numbers represents the cells that are checked during the corresponding step. Every highlighted square depicts one of the squares that is checked by the algorithm.

The time complexity of this approach is $$O(N^3M)$$, lower than the previous solution. As shown in Section 31.2.1.1, there are $$O(NM)$$ potential top-left corners for a square and for each of them $$O(N)$$ diagonal steps. Each diagonal steps costs $$O(N)$$ as, in the worst case scenario, we must check one entire row and column. Thus the complexity of calculating the value of the largest square having a certain cell as the top-left corner is $$O(N^2)$$ (See Figure 31.2 where you can see that no cell is checked twice during this step).

Listing [list:square_in_matrix_diagonal] shows a possible implementation of the idea described here. Note how Listings [list:square_in_matrix_diagonal] and [list:square_in_matrix:bruteforce1] for both the solutions proposed so far are very similar, with the only difference being in how the size of the largest square constructible from a certain top-left cell is computed.

[fig:square_in_matrix:square_matrix_diagonal]

Listing 2: C++ brute force solution using diagonal steps for solving the \textit{square in matrix} problem.

[[nodiscard]] int largerSquareFrom(
const vector<vector<int>>& matrix,
const std::pair<size_t, size_t>& top_left_corner,
const size_t rows,
const size_t cols)
{
const auto [x, y] = top_left_corner;

int k     = 0;
bool good = true;
while (good && ((x + k) < rows) && ((y + k) < cols))
{
for (size_t i = x; good && i <= x + k; i++)
{
for (size_t j = y; good && j <= y + k; j++)
{
if (!matrix[i][j])
{
return k;
}
}
}
++k;
}
return k;
}

const vector<vector<int>>& matrix)
{
if (matrix.size() <= 0 || matrix[0].size() <= 0)
return 0;

const auto rows = matrix.size();
const auto cols = matrix[0].size();
int ans         = 0;
for (size_t i = 0; i < rows; i++)
for (size_t j = 0; j < cols; j++)
if (matrix[i][j])
ans = std::max(ans, largerSquareFrom(matrix, {i, j}, rows, cols));

return ans * ans;
}

### Dynamic programming

#### General Idea

This problem can be solved faster than $$O(N^3M)$$ time with the help of dynamic programming. The solution is based on the fact that for any square of size $$k\times k$$ having as bottom-left corner the cell $$(x,y)$$ it also has a top, top-left and left subsquares of size $$(k-1)\times (k-1)$$. As an example see Figure $$3\times 3$$ decomoposed into $$3$$, $$2\times 2$$ subsquares.

[fig:square_in_matrix:squa_matrix_incremental2]

.

Suppose $$DP(i,j)$$ is a function returning the size of the largest square having the cell $$(i,j)$$ as its bottom-right corner (what is discussed in this Section can be easily adapted so that $$(i,j)$$ is the top-left corner). Clearly the values of $$DP(0,j) \: : 0 \leq j \leq M$$ (all the cells belonging to the first row) and $$DP(i,0) \: : 0 \leq i \leq N$$ (all the cells of the first column) are the same as the values in the input matrix (either 1 or 0 depending on the corresponding value in the input matrix $$M$$). This is explained by the fact that a cell in the first row or column lacks one or more of the subsquares described above. For instance for a cell in the first row, the top subsquare is missing (as there are no cells above it) and thus it is impossible to construct a square having a side larger than $$1$$ starting from it. For all the other (internal) cells the value of $$DP$$ can be easily calculated by using the Equation [eq:square_in_matrix_DPformula]. The formula is basically stating that if we have a cell $$(i,j)$$ set to $$1$$ then from it we can construct a larger square whose size depends on the size of the smallest square among the neighboring subsquares. $\label{eq:square_in_matrix_DPformula} DP(i,j) = min\{DP(i-1,j),DP(i-1,j-1), DP(i,j-1)\} +1$ Figure 31.4 shows the idea above in practice. The value $$2$$ in $$DP(1,3)$$, $$DP(1,2)$$ and $$DP(2,2)$$ signifies that there is a square of size $$2\times 2$$ up to (having that cell as bottom-right corner) those cells in the original matrix. By combining those $$3$$ squares with the set cell at location $$(2,3)$$ we can build a larger square of size $$3\times 3$$. Now consider the value of $$DP(3,4)=3$$. The entries for the neighboring cells $$DP(3,4)=3$$ and $$DP(3,4)=3$$ imply that a square of side $$3\times 3$$ exists up to their indices, but the entry at location $$DP(2,4)=1$$ indicates that up to that cell only a square of size $$1\times 1$$ exists and this prevents cell $$(3,4)$$ having a maximum square size larger than $$2$$ (in other words, making a square of size $$3$$ from $$(3,4)$$ is limited by the cells above it).

[fig:square_in_matrix:square_DP_example]

The function DP in Equation [eq:square_in_matrix_DPformula] is recursive and when drawing its recursion tree, as shown in Figure 31.5 (which depicts part of the recursion tree for $$DP(3,3)$$), we can easily see that:

• the tree is complete and therefore has an exponential number of nodes.

• there are duplicate nodes.

The number of possible unique function calls to DP is bounded by the values of its parameters which is far less than exponential. In fact, it is proportional to $$N \times M$$ (the size of the input matrix) as there are only $$N$$ possible values for $$i$$ and $$M$$ possible values for $$j$$ in $$DP(i,j)$$. Therefore the only way for the recursion tree to have an exponential number of nodes is for some of them to be duplicates. Given this fact we can conclude that the problem exposes both the property of optimal substructure, because it can be solved by optimally solving smaller subproblems, and has overlapping subproblems. As such, we can employ dynamic programming and solve each subproblem only once. In the Sections 31.2.2.2 31.2.2.3 we will go through the details of the two ways of implementing dynamic programming algorithm

• top-down

• bottom-up

[fig:square_in_matrix:recursiontree]

#### Top-Down

This is probably the easiest way of implementing the dynamic programming solution for the problem described in Section 31.2.2.1 as we can directly translate the Equation [eq:square_in_matrix_DPformula] to a recursive function. The important fact that allows us to implement it efficiently is to remember the solution to a a subproblem by using a cache (which can easily be a 2D matrix or anything that allows us to map $$(i,j)$$ to a integer, like a hashmap) as shown in Listing [list:square_in_matrix_top_down]. As you can see, in the implementation shown here we use as a cache a std::unordered_map<Cell, int> (where Cell is just an alias for std::tuple<int,int>) where the function CellHash is the type we provide to std::unordere_map so it knows how to hash a Cell. The main driver function is the function int maximal_square_in_matrix_top_down(const vector<vector<int>>& matrix) which operates in a similar manner as in the other solutions seen so far and calculates the final results by looping over all cells of the matrix and calculating the largest square having that cell as a bottom-right corner for each of them. The most important part of the code is the recursive function which takes as input the original matrix, the cache (by reference because it needs to update it along the way) the which it operates on and the and of the input matrix (we are passing it along so we avoid retrieving it from the object for every invocation).

This function which has two base cases:

1. when the current cell has value of $$0$$ no square can have it as the bottom right corner so $$0$$ is returned.

2. when we ask for the maximal square from a cell that is outside the bounds of the original matrix we simply return $$0$$. Such cell does not exist so we cannot have a square having it as the bottom-right corner.

3. when the value for a cell has already been calculated and it is thus already in the we avoid the expensive work and simply return the value in the cache. This is how duplicate work is avoided.

If none of the base-case conditions are true then, as per the description of the Equation [eq:square_in_matrix_DPformula], we calculate the maximal square recursively calling on the cells immediately:

• above:

• to the left:

• to the top-left:

When the values for all the recursive calls above is finally calculated we save it in the cache before returning it to the caller so it will be available on subsequent calls.

The complexity of this implementation is $$O(NM)$$ because the function is executed only $$O(NM)$$ times (you can verify this by printing the after the bases cases in and see that no duplicates appear in the list).

                 \\textit{square in matrix} problem." label="list:square_in_matrix_top_down"}
using Cell = std::tuple<int, int>;

struct CellHash : public std::unary_function<Cell, std::size_t>
{
std::size_t operator()(const Cell& k) const
{
return std::get<0>(k) ^ std::get<1>(k);
}
};
using Cache = std::unordered_map<Cell, int, CellHash>;

int maximal_square_in_matrix_top_down_helper(const vector<vector<int>>& matrix,
Cache& cache,
const Cell cell,
const size_t rows,
const size_t cols)
{
auto [i, j] = cell;

if ((i >= rows || j >= cols) || (!matrix[i][j]))
return 0;

if (cache.contains(cell))
return cache[cell];

// uncomment the line below to verify no work for the same cell is done
// twice std::format("Recursive call for ({0:d},(1:d})\n", i,j);

const int ans = std::min({maximal_square_in_matrix_top_down_helper(
matrix, cache, Cell{i - 1, j}, rows, cols),
maximal_square_in_matrix_top_down_helper(
matrix, cache, Cell{i - 1, j - 1}, rows, cols),
maximal_square_in_matrix_top_down_helper(
matrix, cache, Cell{i, j - 1}, rows, cols)})
+ 1;
cache[cell] = ans;
return ans;
}

int maximal_square_in_matrix_top_down(const vector<vector<int>>& matrix)
{
if (matrix.size() <= 0 || matrix[0].size() <= 0)
return 0;

const auto rows = matrix.size();
const auto cols = matrix[0].size();
Cache cache;

int ans = 0;
for (size_t i = 0; i < rows; i++)
for (size_t j = 0; j < cols; j++)
ans = std::max(ans,
maximal_square_in_matrix_top_down_helper(
matrix, cache, Cell{i, j}, rows, cols));
return ans * ans;
}

#### Bottom-up

The other way of implementing a dynamic programming algorithm is to use a bottom-up approach. The idea in this case is to start filling the cache with values we know upfront without doing any work. We have already mentioned some of those values; namely the ones belonging to cells of the first row and columns. Once those values are in the cache we can then move on to calculating the values for the second row. According to the Equation [eq:square_in_matrix_DPformula] in order to calculate $$DP(1,1)$$, the values for $$DP(0,1)$$, $$DP(1,0)$$ and $$DP(0,0)$$ are needed. Because they all belong to either the first or second row, and because values for cells in those locations are already in the cache we can calculate $$DP(1,1)$$. When $$DP(1,1)$$ is in the cache, then we can also calculate $$DP(1,2)$$ and so on for all the cells in the row. The same reasoning can be applied to the rest of the rows. Eventually the cache will be filled completely and thus the answer is just the largest value in the cache.

Listing [list:square_in_matrix_bottom_up] shows a possible implementation of such idea.

                 \\textit{square in matrix} problem." label="list:square_in_matrix_bottom_up"}
int maximal_square_in_matrix_bottom_up(const vector<vector<int>>& matrix)
{
if (matrix.size() <= 0 || matrix[0].size() <= 0)
return 0;

const auto rows = matrix.size();
const auto cols = matrix[0].size();
// first row and first column have the same values as in the original
// input matrix
std::vector<vector<int>> cache(matrix);

// is there a 1 in the first row?
int ans =
std::find(begin(matrix[0]), end(matrix[0]), 1) != end(matrix[0]) ? 1 : 0;

// is there a 1 in the first column?
for (size_t i = 1; i < rows; i++)
{
if (matrix[i][0])
{
ans = 1;
break;
}
}

for (size_t i = 1; i < rows; i++)
{
for (size_t j = 1; j < cols; j++)
{
if (matrix[i][j])
{
cache[i][j] =
std::min({cache[i - 1][j], cache[i][j - 1], cache[i - 1][j - 1]})
+ 1;
}
ans = std::max(ans, cache[i][j]);
}
}
return ans * ans;
}

This implementation initializes the variable with $$1$$ or $$0$$ depending on if there is a cell set in the first row or column or not. The rest of the code loops through the the rest of the cells starting from cell $$(1,1)$$ and avoiding the first row and column because - as stated before - the values for these cells are known upfront. For each of these cells the final value is calculated by using Equation [eq:square_in_matrix_DPformula].

The complexity of the code in Linst [list:square_in_matrix_bottom_up] is clearly $$O(NM)$$ (probably more obvious in here than in the top-down solution).