Von Neumann neighborhood

In cellular automata, the von Neumann neighborhood (or 4-neighborhood) is classically defined on a two-dimensional square lattice and is composed of a central cell and its four adjacent cells. The neighborhood is named after John von Neumann, who used it to define the von Neumann cellular automaton and the von Neumann universal constructor within it. It is one of the two most commonly used neighborhood types for two-dimensional cellular automata, the other one being the Moore neighborhood. This neighbourhood can be used to define the notion of 4-connected pixels in computer graphics. The von Neumann neighbourhood of a cell is the cell itself and the cells at a Manhattan distance of 1. The concept can be extended to higher dimensions, for example forming a 6-cell octahedral neighborhood for a cubic cellular automaton in three dimensions.