Application of this approach led to a breakthrough in the [[ComputationalAnalysis complexityof theoryalgorithms|computational complexity]] of geometric algorithms when [[Michael Ian Shamos|Shamos]] and Hoey presented algorithms for [[line segment intersection]] in the plane, and in particular, they described how a combination of the scanline approach with efficient data structures ([[self-balancing binary search tree]]s) makes it possible to detect whether there are intersections among ''N'' segments in the plane in time complexity of [[Big O notation|O]](''N'' log ''N'').<ref>{{citation
| last1 = Shamos | first1 = Michael I. | author1-link = Michael Ian Shamos
