Algebraic distance

This section requires expansion.(December

2008)
This is a metric often used in computer vision that can be minimized by least squares estimation. [1][2] For curves or surfaces given by the equation (such as a conic in homogeneous coordinates), the algebraic distance from the point to the curve is simply . It

may serve as an "initial guess" for geometric distance to refine estimations of the curve by more accurate methods, such as non-linear least squares.