Laplace Operator

Kelompok:
Prinzky Lukito - 535180103
Evander Christian Dumalang - 535180125
Lubby Gennady - 535180126
Definition
• In mathematics the Laplace operator or Laplacian is a differential operator given by the divergence of the gradient of a
function on Euclidean space. It is usually denoted by the symbols ∇·∇, ∇2 or ∆. The Laplacian ∆f(p) of a function f at a
point p, up to a constant depending on the dimension, is the rate at which the average value of f over spheres centered
at p, deviates from f(p) as the radius of the sphere grows. In a Cartesian coordinate system, the Laplacian is given by
the sum of second partial derivatives of the function with respect to each independent variable. In other coordinate
systems such as cylindrical and spherical coordinates, the Laplacian also has a useful form.

• The Laplace operator is named after the French mathematician Pierre-Simon de Laplace (1749–1827), who first applied
the operator to the study of celestial mechanics. In this case, the operator gives a constant multiple of the mass density
when it is applied to a given gravitational potential. Solutions of the equation ∆f = 0, now called Laplace's equation, are
the so-called harmonic functions, and represent the possible gravitational fields in free space.

• The Laplacian occurs in differential equations that describe many physical phenomena, such as electric and
gravitational potentials, the diffusion equation for heat and fluid flow, wave propagation, and quantum mechanics. The
Laplacian represents the flux density of the gradient flow of a function. For instance, the net rate at which a chemical
dissolved in a fluid moves toward or away from some point is proportional to the Laplacian of the chemical
concentration at that point; the resulting equation is the diffusion equation. For these reasons, the Laplace operator is
used in the sciences for modelling all kinds of physical phenomena. In image processing and computer vision, the
Laplacian operator has been used for various tasks such as blob and edge detection.
Theory
1. In the previous tutorial we learned how to use the Sobel Operator. It was based on the fact that in the edge area, the
pixel intensity shows a "jump" or a high variation of intensity. Getting the first derivative of the intensity, we observed
that an edge is characterized by a maximum, as it can be seen in the figure:

2. And...what happens if we take the second derivative?

You can observe that the second derivative is zero! So, we can also use this criterion to attempt to detect edges in an
image. However, note that zeros will not only appear in edges (they can actually appear in other meaningless locations);
this can be solved by applying filtering where needed.
 Laplacian Operator
1. From the explanation above, we deduce that the second derivative can be used to detect edges. Since images are "*2D*",
we would need to take the derivative in both dimensions. Here, the Laplacian operator comes handy.
2. The Laplacian operator is defined by:

3. The Laplacian edge detector uses only one kernel. It calculates second order derivates in a single pass

4. The Laplacian edge detector is extremely sensitive to noise

Laplacian Solve
3 4 2 5 1
4 3 5 3 4 0 -1 0
1 2 6 2 2
3 1 7 6 1
x -1 4 -1
0 -1 0
2 4 1 1 1

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