TTiling/Route Optimization

[Lars Jonas Olsson]

Hi,
 We want to find a way to optimize how to look at meterial using a
microscope. The optimization should find a set of microscope fields
(rectangular for camera, circular for occulars) that cover all
interesting meterial and also plans a route between these fields.
(travelling salesman problem). We do not need a truly optimal
solution, but just a good one.

 The input is an image of high resolution (3125 by 1562 pixels where
each pixel is binary, material present/absent).

 Our belief is that the tiling problem can be done using some
clustering method with specified maximum cluster diameter.  Does
octave support anything like this? Any other free/commercial package?
Any other mailing list? What are popular free NN packages for
clustering?

Jonas