The problem of finding the intersection/union of 'N' discs/circles on a flat plane was first proposed by M. I. Shamos in his 1978 thesis:
Shamos, M. I. “Computational Geometry” Ph.D. thesis, Yale Univ., New Haven, CT 1978.
Since then, in 1985, Micha Sharir presented an O(n log2n) time and O(n) space deterministic algorithm for the disc intersection/union problem (based on modified Voronoi diagrams): Sharir, M. Intersection and closest-pair problems for a set of planar discs. SIAM .J Comput. 14 (1985), pp. 448-468.
In 1988, Franz Aurenhammer presented a more efficient O(n log n) time and O(n) space algorithm for circle intersection/union using power diagrams (generalizations of Voronoi diagrams): Aurenhammer, F. Improved algorithms for discs and balls using power diagrams. Journal of Algorithms 9 (1985), pp. 151-161.
Earlier in 1983, Paul G. Spirakis also presented an O(n^2) time deterministic algorithm, and an O(n) probabilistic algorithm: Spirakis, P.G. Very Fast Algorithms for the Area of the Union of Many Circles. Rep. 98, Dept. Comput. Sci., Courant Institute, New York University, 1983.
I've been searching for any implementations of the algorithms above, focusing on computational geometry packages, and I haven't found anything yet. As neither appear trivial to put into practice, it would be really neat if someone could point me in the right direction!
