Edge Detection-II

Laplacian of Gaussian (LoG)

&
Difference of Gaussian (DoG)
 The Laplace Operator

• The Laplace operator is a scalar operator

defined as the dot product (inner product) of
two gradient vector operators:

If N=2
 Laplacian of Gaussian (LoG)

• As Laplace operator may detect edges as well

as noise (isolated, out-of-range), it may be
desirable to smooth the image first by a
convolution with a Gaussian kernel of width o

•
• to suppress the noise before using Laplace for
edge detection:

•
• This 2-D LoG can be approximated by a 5 by 5
convolution kernel
• l such as

• The kernel of any other sizes can be obtained by

approximating the continuous expression of LoG
given above.
• However, make sure that the sum (or average) of all
elements of the kernel has to be zero (similar to the
Laplace kernel) so that the convolution result of a
homogeneous regions is always zero.
 LoG Edge Detection Algorithm
• The edges in the image can be obtained by these
steps:
1. Applying LoG to the image
2. Detection of zero-crossings in the image
3. Threshold the zero-crossings to keep only
those strong ones (large difference between
the positive maximum and the negative
minimum)
4. The last step is needed to suppress the weak
zero-crossings most likely caused by noise.
 Difference of Gaussian (DoG)
• Similar to Laplace of Gaussian, the image is
first smoothed by convolution with Gaussian
kernel of certain width

• to get
• With a different width , a second smoothed
image can be obtained:

• We can show that the difference of these two

Gaussian smoothed images, called difference of
Gaussian (DoG), can be used to detect edges in
the image.

•
• The DoG as an operator or convolution kernel is
defined as

• As the difference between two differently low-pass

filtered images, the DoG is actually a band-pass filter,
which removes high frequency components
representing noise, and also some low frequency
components representing the homogeneous areas in
the image.
• The frequency components in the passing band are
assumed to be associated to the edges in the images.
•
• The discrete convolution kernel for DoG can
be obtained by approximating the continuous
expression of DoG given above.
• Again, it is necessary for the sum or average of
all elements of the kernel matrix to be zero.
 DoG --Algorithm
• Also, similar to the case of LoG, the edges in the
image can be obtained by these steps:
1. Applying DoG to the image
2. Detection of zero-crossings in the image
3. Threshold the zero-crossings to keep only those
strong ones (large difference between the
positive maximum and the negative minimum)
4. The last step is needed to suppress the weak
zero-crossings most likely caused by noise.