Edge Linking & Boundary

Detection

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 Essence
• Methods discussed so far yield pixels only on
edge

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 Edge Linking
• Ideal case: Techniques detecting intensity
discontinuities should yield pixels lying only on
edges ( or the boundary between regions).
• Real life: The detected set of pixels very rarely
describes a complete edge due to effects from:
noise, breaks in the edge due to non-uniform
illumination.
Edge-detection techniques are followed by linking &
other boundary detection procedures which
assemble edge pixels into meaningful boundaries.
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 Edge Linking….
• Edge in an image, It is a region, where the image intensity
changes drastically.
Methods for edge points detection:
1. Local processing
2. Global processing
Note: Ideally discontinuity detection techniques should
identify pixels lying on the boundary between regions.
⇒ In practice there may be breaks in boundary & spurious
intensity discontinuities.
1. Due to non-uniform illumination
2. Presence of noise
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 Local Processing
• Analyze the pixel characteristics in a small
neighborhood (3x3, 5x5) about every (x,y) in an
image.
• Link similar points to form a edge/boundary of
pixels sharing common properties.
Criteria used/Properties:
• The strength of the response of the gradient
operator that produced the edge pixel.
• The direction of the gradient vector.
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 Local Processing …
• Take an edge detected image.
• Analyze each pixel in small neighborhood of every point (x,y).
• All points that are similar in nature are linked.
• This forms a boundary of pixels that are similar in nature.
Similarity :
 Strength of the response of the gradient operator
 Direction of gradient Edge pixels (x0 , y0 ) and (x, y) are similar,
• if |∇f (x, y) − ∇f (x 0 , y 0 )| ≤ T and
• |α∇f (x, y) − α∇f (x 0 , y 0 )| < A, (x 0 , y 0 ) ∈ Nxy

• Here, T → Non-negative threshold , A → Angle threshold

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First & Second Derivative around a Noisy Edge

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Gradient Operators

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Gradient Operators….

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 Local Processing
Gradient Component

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Mask detecting Diagonal edges:
Sobel & Prewitt

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Gradient & Its Operator

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Using Diagonal Sobel Masks

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The Role of the Laplacian in Segmentation

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Global Processing via the Hough Tr
ansform
• A line in the (x,y) plane passes through several points of interest and
has a set of specific (a,b) values.
• A line in parameter space [(a,b) plane] denotes all lines that pass
through a certain point (xi,yi) and has an infinite number of (a,b)
values.
• A specific line is represented by a point in the (a,b) plane.
• 2 lines in parameter space that meet at a certain point show points
belonging to the same line (in x,y plane).
• Since a,b approach infinity as a line approaches the vertical, we can
use the normal representation of a line:
• Hough transform is applicable to any function of the form g(v,c) = 0.
v: vector of coordinates, c: coefficients.
e.g. points lying on a circle:
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Hough..
Continued

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Hough..
Continued

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Hough Transform Continued….

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 Regional processing
To understand sufficient requirements are
1) two starting pts must be specified
2) All pts must be ordered
• Large distance between successive points, relative to the
distance between other points
⇒ boundary segment (open curve)
⇒ end points used as starting point
• Separation between points uniform
⇒ boundary (closed curve)
⇒ extreme points used as starting point
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 Iterative Polygon Fit Algo

End pts are A & B, vertices of polygon

Compute straight line passing
Compute perpendicular distance from all other pts in curve to this line
And select pt yield max distance , if exceeds T , corresponding pts labeled C
(vertex)

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 Iterative Polygon Fit Algo…

Starting vertices A & B, Perpendicular dist in

the curve from all other pts to this line
Largest distance from pt C to line AB & also
passed through test >T, so C is new vertex,
Various stages
Final vertices form Polygon

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Global Processing Via Graph Theoretic Techniques

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Global Processing Via Graph Theoretic Techniques…

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Algorithm…

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Algorithm…

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Edge from Graph Technique..

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Segmentation based on Threshold
• It produce pixel with similar intensities
• Usually for boundaries in images which
contain solid edge object resting on
contrasting background,

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Thresholding….

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Thresholding…

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Poor Illumination

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Basic Global thresholding

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Automatically obtain T

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Estimated Global thresholding

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Local Thresholding
Original image

Segmented by
local
thresholding

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Threshold based several variables

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Basic Adaptive thresholding

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Basic Adaptive Thresholding

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