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Road detection is an essential component of indoor robot navigation. Vision sensors have great advantages in road detection as they can provide rich information in terms of environmental perception. In this paper, a monocular vision sensor-based method for indoor road and stair detection is proposed, which detects feasible areas in indoor environments very fast without paying attention to detailed features of walls or other obstacles. More specifically, for a given indoor road image captured by an on-board vision sensor, the simple linear iterative clustering (SLIC) algorithm-based approach for efficient image segmentation is introduced. Then, according to the DBSCAN algorithm, the generated superpixels are clustered to form large areas of view. The initial road area is obtained through a safe window on the middle bottom of the image. In order to achieve a more accurate road segmentation, the initial image is processed by the binary search, edge detection based on the Canny operator and straight-line detection and location based on the Hough transform, which integrates edge and stair information into road detection. Several experiments are performed to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method could accurately detect road information and staircase information in images and succeeds in addressing the indoor road-detection problem.

Nonlinear spiking neural P (NSNP) systems are a class of neural-like computational models inspired from the nonlinear mechanism of spiking neurons. NSNP systems have a distinguishing feature: nonlinear spiking mechanism. To handle edge detection of images, this paper proposes a variant, nonlinear spiking neural P (NSNP) systems with two outputs (TO), termed as NSNP-TO systems. Based on NSNP-TO system, an edge detection framework is developed, termed as ED-NSNP detector. The detection ability of ED-NSNP detector relies on two convolutional kernels. To obtain good detection performance, particle swarm optimization (PSO) is used to optimize the parameters of the two convolutional kernels. The proposed ED-NSNP detector is evaluated on several open benchmark images and compared with seven baseline edge detection methods. The comparison results indicate the availability and effectiveness of the proposed ED-NSNP detector.

There has been a growing interest from academia and industry in developing circuits and systems for edge computing and quality control tasks in food production lines, where image-processing is frequently required. This paper outlines the required considerations for designing a fruit classification system based on image-processing using Cellular Automata (CA) models and integrating it into reconfigurable hardware (HW) such as Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). Parallel processing in CA requires numerous processing elements to be implemented and mapping CA models to HW generally comes with limitations. Homogeneous CA arrays are easier to design and implement in HW but can be resource-demanding. To fill this gap, this study explores different alternatives for the HW implementation of CA models, particularly trading computational-parallelism for a more optimized use of the available HW resources. We conducted experimental tests of the designed HW system using the Digilent Nexys development board, and the operation was validated against software-based benchmarks for image-processing, particularly concerning edge-detection. The presented study provides a broader range of design solutions for the HW implementation of two-dimensional CA models and a better understanding of their advantages and disadvantages. The results show that solutions focusing on instruction-parallelism add some complexity to the conception and require more design effort, compared to homogeneous CA models composed of identical cells. However, the instruction-parallel design solutions can significantly improve the HW resource utilization, especially when implementing computationally intensive CA rules in FPGAs.

Because of the shortage of rule gap measurement for light guide plate (LGP) warpage degree, image definition criterion of quality indexing is present based on single CCD camera. The detection paper and LGP are respectively arranged on the camera detection device platform, located by X- and Y-axes driving unit and focused by Z-axis driving unit firstly, different image definition criterion peaks of edge detection evaluation function are obtained in the middle surface of LGP bottom and surface. Finally, different edge detection algorithms are compared under different situations. Results show that the algorithm has good repetition and can meet the online, untouched detection needs.

Considering that the traditional manual detection of micro-accessory has some problems, such as heavy workload, low efficiency and large artificial error, a kind of quality inspection system of micro-accessory has been designed. Micro-vision technology has been used to inspect quality, which optimizes the structure of the detection system. The stepper motor is used to drive the rotating micro-platform to transfer quarantine device and the microscopic vision system is applied to get graphic information of micro-accessory. The methods of image processing and pattern matching, the variable scale Sobel differential edge detection algorithm and the improved Zernike moments sub-pixel edge detection algorithm are combined in the system in order to achieve a more detailed and accurate edge of the defect detection. The grade at the edge of the complex signal can be achieved accurately by extracting through the proposed system, and then it can distinguish the qualified products and unqualified products with high precision recognition.

In order to solve the problems of poor adaptability when setting threshold and the high probability of detecting pseudo-edges in the existing methods of edge detection, the paper proposes an adaptive edge-detection method based on histogram. Multi-scale wavelet transform is used to preprocess the image, the image details are highlighted obviously, and it also can avoid the effect of manual setting filter coefficients. Difference of gray values between the pixels of local area are used to calculate the gradients comprehensively, it extends the gradient direction to four directions. When calculating the gradient of edge pixel, the four directions make the expression of the gradients of edge points more perfect and avoid the edge points missing. The adaptive method is used to compute the threshold of edge-detection, the image is represented by histogram. Then use the ratio of the number of pixels in the bar and the total numbers of pixels to set the initial threshold. The regions on both sides of the initial threshold are used to calculate the high threshold and low threshold until the reasonable error between the current threshold and the previous threshold is very small iteratively. The acquired threshold makes the self-adaptability more reasonable and stronger, it also avoids the detection errors, the connection errors and the pseudo-edges which are caused by setting threshold artificially. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm of edge detection has a good effect of preserving edge detail and filtering noise of image.

Textual information in a video is very useful for video indexing and retrieving. Detecting text blocks in video frames is the first important procedure for extracting the textual information. Automatic text location is a very difficult problem due to the large variety of character styles and the complex backgrounds.

In this paper, we describe the various steps of the proposed text detection algorithm. First, the gray scale edges are detected and smoothed horizontally. Second, the edge image is binarized, and run length analysis is applied to find candidate text blocks. Finally, each detected block is verified by an improved logical level technique (ILLT). Experiments show this method is not sensitive to color/texture changes of the characters, and can be used to detect text lines in news videos effectively.

In this paper, a new edge detection scheme based on block truncation coding (BTC) is proposed. As we know, the BTC is a simple and fast scheme for digital image compression. To detect an edge boundary using the BTC scheme, the bit plane information of each BTC-compressed block is exploited, and a simple block type classifier is introduced.

The experimental results show that the proposed scheme clearly detects the edge boundaries of digital images while requiring very little computational complexity. Meanwhile, the edge detection process can be incorporated into all BTC variant schemes. In other words, the newly proposed scheme provides a good approach for the detection of edge boundaries using block truncation coding.

Active contour model, also called snake, adapts to edges in an image. A snake is defined as an energy minimizing spline – the snake's energy depends on its shape and location within the image. Problems associated with initialization and poor convergence to boundary concavities, however, have limited its utility. In this paper, we present a new external force field, named gravitation force field, for the snake model. We associate this force field with edge preserving smoothing to drive the snake for solving the problems. Our gravitation force field uses gradient values as particles to construct force field in the whole image. This force field will attract the active contour toward the edge boundary. The locations of the initial contour are very flexible, such that they can be very far away from the objects and can be inside, outside, or the mixture. The improved snake can converge toward the object boundary in a fast pace.

We present a novel interactive edge detection algorithm that combines A* search with low-level adaptive image processing. The algorithm models the semantically driven interpretation that we hypothesize to occur between the mind and visual cortex in the human brain. The basic idea is that oriented Gabor sub-bands are used to model grating cells in the mammalian visual system. These sub-bands are used during the search for a path to a marker in an image. A domain expert uses image markers to select edges of interest.

We demonstrate the system in several image domains. Examples are shown in the areas of photo-interpretation, medical imaging, path planning and general edge finding. The A* search finds a suboptimal result, but executes in a time that is typically 10 to 1,000 times faster than the dynamic programming approach currently used for this type of edge detection.

Edges are prominent features in images. The detection and analysis of edges are key issues in image processing, computer vision and pattern recognition. Wavelet provides a powerful tool to analyze the local regularity of signals. Wavelet transform has been successfully applied to the analysis and detection of edges. A great number of wavelet-based edge detection methods have been proposed over the past years. The objective of this paper is to give a brief review of these methods, and encourage the research of this topic. In practice, an image is usually of multistructure edge, the identification of different edges, such as steps, curves and junctions play an important role in pattern recognition. In this paper, more attention is paid on the identification of different types of edges. We present the main idea and the properties of these methods.

Sparse representation theory has attracted much attention, and has been successfully used in image super-resolution (SR) reconstruction. However, it could only provide the local prior of image patches. Field of experts (FoE) is a way to develop the generic and expressive prior of the whole image. The algorithm proposed in this paper uses the FoE model as the global constraint of SR reconstruction problem to pre-process the low-resolution image. Since a single dictionary could not accurately represent different types of image patches, our algorithm classifies the sample patches composed of pre-processed image and high-resolution image, obtains the sub-dictionaries by training, and adaptively selects the most appropriate sub-dictionary for reconstruction according to the pyramid histogram of oriented gradients feature of image patches. Furthermore, in order to reduce the computational complexity, our algorithm makes use of edge detection, and only applies SR reconstruction based on sparse representation to the edge patches of the test image. Nonedge patches are directly replaced by the pre-processing results of FoE model. Experimental results show that our algorithm can effectively guarantee the quality of the reconstructed image, and reduce the computation time to a certain extent.

This study proposes a method to detect thick circular curves, called circular bands, using the extended Hough Transform. This method enables the direct input of a binary image without requiring pre-processing in edge detection or a post-processing stage to recover the band in the original image. Thus, the useful positional relationships among the pixels of a circular band are preserved for subsequent processing. Several experiments involving the recognition of general circular band objects, traffic signs, and a tunnel entrance in real scenes were conducted to establish the feasibility and applicability of the proposed approach.

Edge detection is a vital part in image segmentation. In this paper, a novel method based on adjacent dispersion for edge detection is proposed. This method utilizes adjacent dispersion to detect edges, avoiding thresholds selection, anisotropy in convolution computation and discontinuity in edges, and it is composed of two modules, namely the dispersion operator and the refinement. The dispersion is to obtain a matrix of discrete coefficient of a gray level image and the refinement is to thin edges to one-pixel-point and ensure it logically continuous. The performance of the proposed edge detector is evaluated on different test images and compared with popular edge detectors, Canny and Sobel. Experiment results indicate that the proposed method performs well without thresholds and offers superior performance in continuity in edge detection in digital images.

Taking the improved ant colony algorithm based on bacterial chemotaxis as a means, this paper proposes one new swarm intelligence optimization algorithm to solve the medical image edge detection problem. The improved ant colony algorithm based on bacterial chemotaxis mainly aims at the shortcoming that the basic ant colony algorithm lacks initial pheromone, and combines bacterial chemotaxis algorithm with basic ant colony algorithm. Firstly, feasible better solution can be found through bacterial chemotaxis algorithm and fed back as initial pheromone. Then ant colony algorithm is implemented to search for the global optimal solution. The algorithm test indicates that the improved ant colony algorithm is more effective in the aspects of searching precision, reliability, optimization speed and stability compared with basic ant colony algorithm. Finally, the improved ant colony algorithm is applied into the edge detection of medical image. It can be seen from the computer simulation that compared with other operators and basic ant colony algorithm on the issue of solving medical image edge detection, the improved ant colony algorithm has superiority and the detected edge is clearer.

Different kinds of illustrations and artistic imagery can be generated or simulated through the nonphotorealistic rendering (NPR) technique. However, designing and simulating new NPR artistic styles remains extremely challenging. Chalk art style is a very famous artistic work all over the world, and few algorithms have been put forward to illustrate this style. This paper presents a novel NPR technique which generates a chalk art drawing from a 2D photograph automatically. We aim at obtaining a set of lines surface with coarse appearance and generating stroke textures of the real chalk painting. Firstly, the edge of the source image is extracted by difference-of-Gaussian filter method. To simulate chalk painting’s lines, image diffusion and enhancement techniques are proposed to produce coarse and rough lines. Secondly, we developed an improved line integral convolution and dilation operation methods to produce the chalk stroke texture. Finally, the edge image, stroke texture image and color image will be mapped to another background image to generate the chalk art drawing. Experimental results are presented to show the effectiveness of our method in producing the color chalk stylistic illustrations, and the methods can simulate the characters of the real chalk art painting. The proposed method of this paper will enlarge the research and application fields of NPR. Meanwhile, it provides a tool for the user to create chalk art paintings via computers even without painting skill.

Edge detection is an active and critical topic in the field of image processing, and plays a vital role for some important applications such as image segmentation, pattern classification, object tracking, etc. In this paper, an edge detection approach is proposed using local edge pattern descriptor which possesses multiscale and multiresolution property, and is named varied local edge pattern (VLEP) descriptor. This method contains the following steps: firstly, Gaussian filter is used to smooth the original image. Secondly, the edge strength values, which are used to calculate the edge gradient values and can be obtained by one or more groups of VLEPs. Then, weighted fusion idea is considered when multiple groups of VLEP descriptors are used. Finally, the appropriate threshold is set to perform binarization processing on the gradient version of the image. Experimental results show that the proposed edge detection method achieved better performance than other state-of-the-art edge detection methods.

Since edge detection is a field of study used by various disciplines, it is of vital importance to calculate it accuretly. In addition, an edge detection algorithm may be involved in many image processing phases. A recent and contemporary approach, neutrosophy is based on neutrosophic logic, neutrosophic probability, neutrosophic set and neutrosophic statistics. This method yields better results compared to various other optimization methods. Neutrosophic Set (NS) is based on the origin, nature and scope of neutralities. In NS, problems are separated into true, false and indeterminacy subsets. It helps solve indeterminate situations effectively. It has recently been used in the field of image processing as indeterminate situations are also encountered in this field. Chan–Vese (CV) model is one of the successful region-based segmentation methods. The present study proposes a new NS-based edge detection method using CV algorithm. The proposed method combines the philosophical view of NS with successful segmentation characteristics of CV model. Obtained edge detection results are compared with different edge detection methods. The performances of each method are analyzed by using Figure of Merit (FOM) and Peak Signal-To-Noise Ratio (PSNR). The results suggest that the proposed method displays a better performance assessment compared to the used well-known methods.

In recent years, with the growth of China’s economy and the development of the automobile manufacturing industry, the number of various vehicles has continuously increased, and the incidence of traffic accidents has also increased. Especially in traffic blind areas, right-turning areas of vehicles, etc., traffic accidents such as vehicle collisions are extremely easy to occur, which poses a serious threat to people’s lives and property, and is extremely harmful. Therefore, related research on collision detection of people and vehicles has been traffic-safe and has received extensive attention from field researchers. At present, the research on human-vehicle collision detection is to detect human-vehicle collision accidents by tracking the track of vehicles and pedestrians, but there are problems such as poor tracking effect, low accuracy of collision discrimination and complex algorithms. Aiming at these problems, this paper studies the human-vehicle collision detection algorithm based on image processing. Through the image processing of traffic monitoring video, the vehicle and pedestrian contour information is extracted. Based on this, a mathematical model for collision detection is constructed to realize human-vehicle collision detection. The results show that the proposed method can effectively distinguish the collision between pedestrians and vehicles, and the algorithm for image processing is simpler than the traditional tracking algorithm, and the time is shorter. The results show that the image-based collision detection algorithm based on image processing can effectively and quickly identify the traffic accidents in which people and vehicles collide, and then can issue alarm signals in time, shortening the accident processing time and reducing the accident time. The possibility of a secondary accident has a high practicability in the detection of traffic accidents in which people and vehicles collide.

Edge detection is one of the most fundamental fields in computer vision. With the rapid development of the combination of Convolutional Neural Network and Multi-Scale Representation of image, significant progress has been made in this field. However, most of them have a huge size, which makes it hard to apply in reality, and a huge number of parameters may lead to waste of computing resources. In this paper, we focus on qualitative analysis of the role of each part in the network, and propose a modified light-weight architecture based on our result and the study of former works. Our new architecture is composed of residual-blocks, max-pooling layers and batch normalization layers. Compared with the previous models, the new architecture performs better in memory, convergence and computation efficiency with similar model size. Moreover, the new architecture can achieve better accuracy with smaller model size. When evaluating our model on the well-known BSDS500 benchmark, we achieve ODS F-measure of 0.769 with parameters less than 0.3M, which shows a better property than the state-of-the-art result 0.766 at this level.