Abstract--In this paper we use the parameteric polar representation to extend the application of edge directional information from circle to ellipse extraction. As a result we obtain a mapping which decomposes the parameter space required for ellipse extraction into two independent sub-spaces and one final histogram accumulator. The mapping includes the tangent of the angle of the first and second directional derivatives. These tangents are computed by considering edge direction at two border points. We show that the use of gradient information for parameter space decomposition avoids the intensive point labelling imposed by geometric constraints used by other approaches.
Computer vision Ellipse detection
Image segmentationFeature extraction Parameter space decomposition Hough transform l.
INTRODUCTIONThe detection of geometric primitives from an image is one of the basic tasks of computer vision. A geometric primitive is represented by a mathematical expression with a number of free parameters which define instances of a shape. Hence, the extraction problem centres on obtaining an estimate of the free parameters according to the information on an image. The Hough transform (HT) is a well-known method to detect shapes by independently considering geometric data composed of edge points. The independent evidence accumulation of the HT makes it robust, providing adequate results even for overlapping or partially occluded objects.In order to gather evidence, the HT defines a mapping from the image space into a parameter space. By considering each border point in an image, the mapping adds a vote to chosen cells in an accumulator which represents the parameter space. The cells increased are those whose associated parameters define the geometric primitive which passes through the image point. Therefore, local maxima in the accumulator array correspond to the parameters of detected shapes.The HT was originally proposed to fit straight lines and then extended to analytical curves31~ Although the technique can be used directly for any parameterized curve, the generalization implies an exponential increase in computational time and space requirements. for this reason, new methods based on the original HT have been proposed (a review of the methods can be seen in Illingworth & Kittler ~2~ and Leaversta~).* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. © Crown copyright (1996). The aim of this paper is to show how directional information can be used to derive a mapping which decomposes the parameter space required for the implementation of the HT. In addition to image points, we consider edge direction as geometric data providing an important clue for evidence gathering in the parameter space.Edge direction information has been used successfully to reduce the computational requirements of the HT in circle extraction, ca'5) The general approach is to include gradient direction information in order to constrain the parameter space. Here we show how the parametric polar representation can be used to combine edge points an...