I have a number of worker threads which all perform a flood-fill task on different regions of a bitmap. They all make calls to a recursive sub-routine with different parameters(coordinates). Fyi, I am using a scan-line method.
I have implemented a reset feature which aims to kill these processes so that they would start again.

The way I have currently implemented my killing mechanism, is to use a kill Event with manual reset and make the flood-fill subroutine return if it is signaled. This way, the threads will still visit a considerable number of points on the region they are bounded to, before blissfully giving up, but nevertheless skip the relevant filling operation. I was wondering if there is a more efficient way of doing this.

P.S. Yes I know it’s an over-kill for flood-fill, but this is a general question. One could imagine a matrix where you would want to perform some expensive local operations based on some local conditions and use a recursive routine of the same nature as an scanline approach.

EDIT:
Here is the current design of my framework:

m_pThread[i] = AfxBeginThread(FloodFill_Sub_ThreadProc, (LPVOID)m_pFloodFillInput[i], 0, 0, CREATE_SUSPENDED);

with threadprocedures defined as:

UINT CTestShellDlg::FloodFill_Sub_ThreadProc(LPVOID pData)
{
...
FloodFill_Sub(mid, mid, Color_old, Color_new);
}

and finally the FloodFill_Sub:

void CTestShellDlg::FloodFill_Sub(CPoint& node, CPoint& mid, COLORREF Color_old, COLORREF Color_new) /*Sub-routine to be used by threads*/
{
if (KillEventTriggered())
        return;
if (RecursionTerminationCondition)
        return;
//loop some scans and make recursive calls to FloodFill_Sub
...
}

Now in the looping section, one could add further KillEventTriggered() checks, But I am wondering if there could be a better approach.