Extended Hough transform for linear feature detection

Improving the accuracy of line segment detection reduces the complexity of subsequent high-level processing common in cartographic feature detection. We developed a new extension to the Hough transform and reported on its application to building extraction. We expanded the Hough space by a third parameter, the horizontal or vertical coordinate of the image space, to provide incremental information as to the length of the lineal feature being sought. Using this extended HT transform allowed us to more accurately detect the true length of a line segment. In addition, we used a Bayesian probabilistic approach to process our extended Hough space that further increased the accuracy of our extended Hough transform.     

Generalizing the Hough transform to detect arbitrary shapes

The Hough transform is a method for detecting curves by exploiting the duality between points on a curve and parameters of that curve. The initial work showed how to detect both analytic curves^(1,2) and non-analytic curves,⁽³⁾ but these methods were restricted to binary edge images. This work was generalized to the detection of some analytic curves in grey level images, specifically lines,⁽⁴⁾ circles⁽⁵⁾ and parabolas.⁽⁶⁾ The line detection case is the best known of these and has been ingeniously exploited in several applications.^(7,8,9)We show how the boundaries of an arbitrary non-analytic shape can be used to construct a mapping between image space and Hough transform space. Such a mapping can be exploited to detect instances of that particular shape in an image. Furthermore, variations in the shape such as rotations, scale changes or figure ground reversals correspond to straightforward transformations of this mapping. However, the most remarkable property is that such mappings can be composed to build mappings for complex shapes from the mappings of simpler component shapes. This makes the generalized Hough transform a kind of universal transform which can be used to find arbitrarily complex shapes.     

Use of the Hough transform for image data compression

It is shown here that the Hough transform may be used for encoding of line curves and waveforms that consist of the concatenation of curves from an underlying set of families of curves. Several properties of the transform are given in this context.     

A method for detection of circular arcs based on the Hough transform

The circular arc is a very useful feature for object detection and recognition in industrial environments. In this paper, a method for detection of circular arcs is described that is based on the Hough transform. The method estimates all five arc parameters and is robust in the presence of a moderate amount of noise. It has a computational and memory complexity ofO(n·m·R) andO(n·m) respectively, wheren andm are the sizes in thex andy directions andR is the maximum expected arc radius in pixels. Arcs as small as 45 degrees and radii down to 4 pixels can be detected. The computing time is almost independent of the number of circular arcs in the image.This work was supported by the Swedish Board for Technical Development, Grant No. 87-01954P.     

A Hough transform based line recognition method utilizing both parameter space and image space

Hough Transform (HT) is recognized as a powerful tool for graphic element extraction from images due to its global vision and robustness in noisy or degraded environment. However, the application of HT has been limited to small-size images for a long time. Besides the well-known heavy computation in the accumulation, the peak detection and the line verification become much more time-consuming for large-size images. Another limitation is that most existing HT-based line recognition methods are not able to detect line thickness, which is essential to large-size images, usually engineering drawings. We believe these limitations arise from that these methods only work on the HT parameter space. This paper therefore proposes a new HT-based line recognition method, which utilizes both the HT parameter space and the image space. The proposed method devises an image-based gradient prediction to accelerate the accumulation, introduces a boundary recorder to eliminate redundant analyses in the line verification, and develops an image-based line verification algorithm to detect line thickness and reduce false detections as well. It also proposes to use pixel removal to avoid overlapping lines instead of rigidly suppressing the N×N neighborhood. We perform experiments on real images with different sizes in terms of speed and detection accuracy. The experimental results demonstrate the significant performance improvement, especially for large-size images.     

基于Hough变换提取直线的改进方法研究

传统的Hough变换用于检测直线时,存在不能确定直线端点、会检测出虚假直线以及对称地额外画出直线的问题,文章针对这些特点对Hough变换加以改进,经过实践检验,提取的特征较完整,改进效果较理想。     

Adaptive image segmentation for region-based object retrieval using generalized Hough transform

Finding an object inside a target image by querying multimedia data is desirable, but remains a challenge. The effectiveness of region-based representation for content-based image retrieval is extensively studied in the literature. One common weakness of region-based approaches is that perform detection using low level visual features within the region and the homogeneous image regions have little correspondence to the semantic objects. Thus, the retrieval results are often far from satisfactory. In addition, the performance is significantly affected by consistency in the segmented regions of the target object from the query and database images. Instead of solving these problems independently, this paper proposes region-based object retrieval using the generalized Hough transform (GHT) and adaptive image segmentation. The proposed approach has two phases. First, a learning phase identifies and stores stable parameters for segmenting each database image. In the retrieval phase, the adaptive image segmentation process is also performed to segment a query image into regions for retrieving visual objects inside database images through the GHT with a modified voting scheme to locate the target visual object under a certain affine transformation. The learned parameters make the segmentation results of query and database images more stable and consistent. Computer simulation results show that the proposed method gives good performance in terms of retrieval accuracy, robustness, and execution speed.     

基于Hough变换的圆检测方法

总结了圆检测的几种常用方法,如经典HT、随机HT和广义HT.结合几种方法的优缺点,提出了一种基于经典HT的改进Hough变换圆检测方法.该方法先对图像进行预处理,如灰度化、去噪滤波、边缘检测以及运用数学形态学等,然后进行Hough变换.其主要思想是用多维数组来代替经典的循环过程.把Hough变换应用到织物防水性能自动测试的真实图像中,通过对经典Hough变换与改进后的Hough变换的比较,可以看出检测速度有所提高,检测精度也达到了令人满意的程度.     

A fast digital Radon transform—An efficient means for evaluating the Hough transform

A fast digital Radon transform based on recursively defined digital straight lines is described, which has the sequential complexity of N² log N additions for an N × N image. This transform can be used to evaluate the Hough transform to detect straight lines in a digital image. Whilst a parallel implementation of the Hough transform algorithm is difficult because of global memory access requirements, the fast digital Radon transform is vectorizable and therefore well suited for parallel computation. The structure of the fast algorithm is shown to be quite similar to the FFT algorithm for decimation in frequency. It is demonstrated that even for sequential computation the fast Radon transform is an attractive alternative to the classical Hough transform algorithm.     

Analysis of textual images using the Hough transform

The analysis of images of printed pages of text is considered. Since printed text can be viewed as textured line, the use of the Hough transform for detecting straight lines is proposed as an analysis tool. Methods for handling several discretization problems that arise in mapping the rectangular image space to the (, ) accumulator array are described. Several applications of analyzing the accumulator array are proposed. They include detecting the text skew angle, determining the signature of a text line so as to accept or reject a block as containing only text, using profile analysis to segment text into lines, and determining whether a textual block is rightside-up or otherwise.     

Recognition of handprinted Hebrew characters using features selected in the Hough transform space

Automatic identification of handprinted Hebrew characters is described in this paper. The recognition model devised constitutes a multi-stage system. In the first stage a coarse classifier allocates the input patterns into one of 17 categories, based on the number and the location of end points within predetermined regions in the characters matrix. The second stage uses features extracted in the Hough transform space to classify characters assigned to each of 16 categories. The remaining one category, composed of similar, square-like (rotated L shape) classes, is recognized by structural analysis and a statistical classifier. An additional step of postprocessing is added to compensate for the sensitivity of the Hough transform to the existence of similar classes within some of the categories. Experiments were conducted with a multi-author (40 writers) data base. An average recognition rate of 86.9% was observed for the system. This compared favorably with the results of two other recognition methods.     

一种用Hough变换检测圆的快速算法

为了克服传统Hough变换检测圆时耗时巨大的缺陷,给出了一种新的基于Hough变换检测圆的快速算法.新算法与传统的方法相比具有以下特点:计算量少,提高了检测的速度;保留了传统Hough变换识别率高、抗噪性强、对不完整边缘具有鲁棒性等所有优点;不需要任何特殊的限定条件.实验表明,新的快速算法可以快速进行目标识别,在实时目标识别系统中具有良好的表现.     

利用局部算子检测峰值的改进Hough变换算法*

提出了一种改进的峰值检测算法,将累加器空间视为一幅二维图像,利用局部算子区增强期望的直线和噪声对应的峰值之间的差别;利用最小二乘法拟合增强后的累加器空间对应的分布直方图,得到具有更强鲁棒性的阈值来确定期望峰值所在的位置。实验结果表明,该算法同时具有较高的精度和较强的鲁棒性,对先验知识的需求很低,具有较好的通用性,为自主应用方式奠定了基础。     

基于Hough变换的植物叶脉检测新方法

针对植物叶脉的特点,提出了利用灰度拉伸、Hough变换与边缘生长、图像腐蚀与膨胀进行植物叶脉检测的新方法。在该方法中,Hough变换检测植物叶脉图像的同时也较好的消除了图像噪声,该方法应用到植物叶脉检测中效果较好。     

一种新的用于检测直线的快速Hough变换

在分析现有常用的改进Hough变换算法思想的基础上,设计了一种新的用于直线检测的快速Hough变换,通过与现有改进Hough变换算法的比较实验,新设计算法具有更好的实时性。     

基于区域生长与Hough变换的虹膜定位方法

快速、准确地定位虹膜是虹膜识别系统的关键。在分析了传统虹膜定位算法的基础上,提出了一种把区域生长与Hough变换相结合的虹膜定位方法,利用区域生长搜索虹膜的内边缘,根据图像的灰度变化规律,搜索位于外边缘的若干个点,利用Hough变换找出外边缘所在位置。实验结果表明,该方法易于实现,减少搜索的盲目性,可提高定位速度。     

Application of the Hough transform to correct for linear variation of background illumination in images

The Hough transform has been formulated to detect areas of linear brightness variation within an image. The formulation leads to significant computational advantage involving a restricted parameter search space. Two applications are included to demonstrate the efficacy of this technique.     

Hough transform for feature detection in panoramic images

Omni-directional sensors are useful in obtaining a 360° field-of-view. With a radially symmetric mirror and conventional lens system this can be achieved with a single camera. There are several proposed profiles for the mirror, but most violate the single viewpoint (SVP) criteria necessary to allow functional equivalence to the standard perspective projection, posing challenges that have not yet been addressed in the literature. Such a imaging system with a non-SVP optical system do not benefit from the affine quality of straight line features being represented as collinear points in the image plane. To utilize these non-SVP mirrors, a new method to recognize such features is required. This work describes an approach to detecting features in panoramic non-SVP images using a modified Hough transform. A mathematical model for this feature extraction process is given. Experimental results are presented to validate this model and show robust performance in identifying line features with only estimated calibration.     

旧电影中基于Hough变换直线划痕的检测

为保护旧电影和国家档案影片,研究了旧电影自动修复与保护的方法.为了有效检测旧电影中常见的直线划痕,分析了直线划痕产生的原因、基本特征,检测方法.在分析Hough原理的基础上,提出了一种基于Hough变换的直线划痕检测方法.实验结果表明,该算法能有效地检测旧电影中的直线划痕,并可为旧电影中直线划痕的自动修复提供理论依据和实现基础.     

用两步Hough变换检测圆

Hough变换在图像处理中占有重要地位,是一种检测曲线的有效方法。但使用传统的Hough变换来检测圆,具有存储空间大计算时间长的缺点。为此提出了采用两步Hough变换的圆检测方法,利用圆的斜率特性,降低了Hough参数空间的维度,提高了运算效率,并推广到椭圆的检测之中。