Largest empty rectangle
In computational geometry, the largest empty rectangle problem, maximal empty rectangle problem or maximum empty rectangle problem, is the problem of finding a rectangle of maximal size to be placed among obstacles in the plane. There are a number of variants of the problem, depending on the particularities of this generic formulation, in particular, depending on the measure of the "size", domain (type of obstacles), and the orientation of the rectangle. The problems of this kind arise e.g., in electronic design automation, in design and verification of physical layout of integrated circuits. A maximal empty rectangle is a rectangle which is not contained in another empty rectangle. Each side of a maximal empty rectangle abuts an obstacle (otherwise the side may be shifted outwards, increasing the empty rectangle). An application of this kind is enumeration of "maximal white rectangles" in image segmentation R&D of image processing and pattern recognition. In the contexts of many algorithms for largest empty rectangles, "maximal empty rectangles" are candidate solutions to be considered by the algorithm, since it is easily proven that, e.g., a maximum-area empty rectangle is a maximal empty rectangle. (Wikipedia).
