06 - Edge Detection

Image Processing & Computer Vision
Edge Detection
2 Edges as Reduced Images
Edges seem to be important…
Image Processing and Computer Vision by Dr. Praveen Kumar @ CSE, VNIT
3 Why Edge Detection
- More compactly represents salient features of –
the scene than pixels
- Helps in determining object boundaries and
segmentation
- Further features can be extracted from the
edges of an image (e.g., corners, lines etc.)
- These features can be used by higher-level
computer vision algorithms (e.g., recognition).
4 Edge Detection
What is an edge? An edge is a set of connected pixels
that lie on the boundary between two regions. It is
locally identifiable place of local transition from one
object to another. They are not complete border.
6 Edges in reality
Depth
discontinuity:
Reflectance change, object boundary
texture
Cast shadows
Discontinuous
change in surface
orientation
7 Edges & Derivatives
We have already spoken about how derivatives are
used to find discontinuities
Image intensity function first derivative
(along horizontal scanline)
edges correspond to
extrema of derivative
9 Image gradient
f f
The gradient of an image: f = [ , ]
x y
f f f f
f = [ , 0]  f= [ 0 , ] f = [ , ]
y  x y
x
The gradient points in the direction of most

rapid increase in intensity
10 Image gradient
For a function f(x, y) the gradient of f at coordinates (x, y)

is given as the column vector:
 f 
G x   x 
f =   =  f 
G y   
 y 
 
11 Image gradient (cont…)
The edge strength is given by the gradient

magnitude: f = mag (f )
1
 f   f  
2 2 2
=   +
 
 
x   y  

 
For practical reasons this can be simplified as:

f  G x + G y
12 Recollect our 1st Derivative
For 2D function, f(x,y), the partial derivative is defined as:
 f ( x , y) f (x +,y) − f(x ,y )
= lim
x  →0

For discrete data, we can approximate using finite
differences:
f (x, y)
 f (x +1, y) − f (x, y)
• Right difference x
f (x, y)
 f (x , y) − f (x-1, y)
• Left difference x
f
• Central difference  ( f (x +1) − f (x −1)) / 2
x
13 1st derivatives as a filter
f ( x , y) f ( x , y)
x y
-1
-1 1 1
14 1st Derivative Kernels
0 0 Not symmetric 0 0 0 Central

-1 +1 around image -1/2 0 +1/2 difference
0 0 0 0 0
point; which is
H “middle” pixel? H
-1 0 1 1 1 1
Prewitt Kernel:
1 -1 0 1 1 0 0 0
Try to reduce the ∗ ∗
6 -1 0 1 6 -1 -1 -1
sensitiveness to
noise by averaging
15 Sobel operator
-1 0 1 1 2 1
(Sobel) Gradient is 1 1
∗ -2 0 2 ∗ 0 0 0
8 -1 0 1 8 -1 -2 -1
I = [gx gy]T g𝑥 g𝑦
g = (gx2 + gy2)1/2 is the gradient magnitude.

 = atan2(gy , gx) is the gradient direction.
16 Edge Detection Example
Original Image Horizontal Gradient Component
Vertical Gradient Component Combined Edge Image

17 But in the real world…
Derivative based edge detectors are very sensitive to
noise
f(x)
Apply derivative operator….
d
f(x) where’s
dx
the edge?
18
Solution: smooth first
19
f
20
f
h f
21
f Where is the
edge?
h
h f

(h  f ) Look for peaks
x
22 Importance of Scale
Structures exist at multiple scales
Too fine of a scale…can’t see the forest for the trees.

Too coarse of a scale…the branches are gone.
23 Scale space
A simple image pyramid Image scale space by varying Edge gradient at

sigma of a smoothing function different scale
24 Main Steps in edge detection
1. Image smoothing: for reduction of noise and
irrelevant details/adjusting scale
2. Differentiation: apply differential operator to obtain
the gradient magnitude
3. Thresholding: determining edge pixels
4. Localization - Finding the curve with peak/optimal
gradient magnitude.
5. link or connect edge pixels.
25 Optimal edge detector
Criteria for an “optimal” edge detector:
Good detection: the optimal detector must minimize the probability of false
positives (detecting spurious edges caused by noise), as well as that of
false negatives (missing real edges)
Good localization: edges detected must be as close as possible to true edges
Single response: the detector must return one point only for each true edge
point; that is, minimize the number of local maxima around the true edge
26 The Canny Edge Detection
1. Smooth the image with a Gaussian filter with spread .
2. Compute gradient magnitude and direction at each pixel of
the smoothed image.
3. non-maximum suppression: Thin multi-pixel wide “ridges”
down to single pixel width
4. Linking and thresholding (hysteresis): Use double
thresholding to segregate ‘strong’ (high-magnitude) and
‘weak’ edge pixels. Use strong edge pixels to start edge
curves and weak edge pixels to continue them.
27 Example Result
original image (Lena) magnitude of the gradient
28 Example Result
thresholding
29 Example Result
How to turn
these thick
regions of
the gradient
into curves?
30 Non-maximal suppression
• Check if pixel is local maximum along gradient direction.

Zero out pixel whose magnitude is less than its
neighbour’s along the gradient direction.
• Can require checking interpolated pixels p and r
31 Example Result
Problem:
pixels along this
edge didn’t
survive the
thresholding
thinning
(non-maximum
suppression)
32 Canny threshold hysteresis
1. Apply a high threshold to detect strong edge pixels.
2. Link those strong edge pixels to form strong edges.
3. Apply a low threshold to find weak but plausible edge
pixels.
4. Extend the strong edges to follow weak edge pixels by
doing connectivity analysis (keep only those weak
edge pixels which are connected to strong edge
pixels).
33 Final Canny edge result
34 Effect of  (Gaussian kernel spread/size)
original Canny with 𝜎 = 1 Canny with 𝜎 =2

• Large σ detects large scale edges
• Small σ detects fine features
The choice of σ depends on desired behavior
35
An optimization
h
h f

(h  f )
x
36 Derivative property of convolution
Derivativeproperty of convolution :  ( f  g ) = f
*g
x x
This saves us one operation:
f

x
h

( x
h )  f
37 2nd Derivative Methods
• Finding optimal edges (maxima of gradient
magnitude) is equivalent to finding places where the
second derivative is zero. Why?
• How do we find maxima or minima of any functions?
We differentiate them and find places where the
derivative is zero.
• Differentiating the first derivative (gradient
magnitude) gives us the second derivative
38 2nd Derivative Methods: Laplacian
We encountered the 2nd-order derivative based
Laplacian filter already – isotropic i.e rotationally
invariant
The Laplacian is typically not used by itself as it is too

sensitive to noise .It is combined with a smoothing
Gaussian filter for purpose of edge detection
39 1D 2nd derivative of Gaussian
f
f
h
2 h h
2 Second derivative of Gaussian
2
x operator 
h
x
2
2
(h  f)
x
2
Zero-crossings of bottom graph are edges

40 2nd Derivative Methods (contd.)
• The zeroes may not fall exactly on a pixel. We can
isolate these zeroes by finding zero crossings:
places where one pixel is positive and a
neighbour is negative (or vice versa)
• zero crossings form closed paths and very
sensitive to noise
41 LOG (Marr-Hildreth edge detector)
• To reduce the noise effect and also to adjust the
scale, the image is first smoothed.
• When the filter chosen is a Gaussian, we call it the
LoG edge detector.
σ controls smoothing/adjusts scale
• It can be shown that:
42 LOG (Marr-Hildreth edge detector)
The Laplacian of Gaussian function can be
approximated over a discrete spatial neighborhood to
give a convolution kernel which looks like a Mexican
hat.
43 Example Result
44 Canny vs LoG Edge Detector
45 Matlab
Demo

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Image Processing & Computer Vision

The gradient points in the direction of most

For a function f(x, y) the gradient of f at coordinates (x, y)

The edge strength is given by the gradient

For practical reasons this can be simplified as:

0 0 Not symmetric 0 0 0 Central

g = (gx2 + gy2)1/2 is the gradient magnitude.

Vertical Gradient Component Combined Edge Image

Apply derivative operator….

Too fine of a scale…can’t see the forest for the trees.

A simple image pyramid Image scale space by varying Edge gradient at

original image (Lena) magnitude of the gradient

• Check if pixel is local maximum along gradient direction.

original Canny with 𝜎 = 1 Canny with 𝜎 =2

This saves us one operation:

The Laplacian is typically not used by itself as it is too

Zero-crossings of bottom graph are edges

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