A new efficient contour following algorithm for connected-component labeling processing is proposed. The basic idea of the algorithm is that the total number of downward chain codes is the same as one of upward chain codes along the closed contour. If the chain code direction is upward, then region start mark is assigned at the chain code departure pixel and if the chain code is downward, then region end mark is assigned at the chain code arrival pixel. The proposed algorithm extracts directly the contour information from only the current direction information of chain. This makes the algorithm simple and fast and requires less memory with comparison to the conventional algorithms.The proposed contour following algorithm can be applied to the various kind of image processing such as region filling, restoration and region feature extraction.