Quadtrees as an Abstract Domain

Quadtrees have proved popular in computer graphics and spatial databases as a way of representing regions in two dimensional space. This hierarchical data-structure is flexible enough to support non-convex and even disconnected regions, therefore it is natural to ask whether this data-structure can form the basis of an abstract domain. This paper explores this question and suggests that quadtrees offer a new approach to weakly relational domains whilst their hierarchical structure naturally lends itself to representation with boolean functions.