Introduction To Image Processing In Biology

WS-2014/15 Uni-Konstanz (1-March-2015)

Optimal Edge-Based Shape Detection

Waleed Abrar
Uni-Konstanz

Abstract:Object detection is always a classical problem in image

processing and people are always looking for better
ways to detect the objects and to improve the
performance of already developed algorithms for
detection.
This paper tried to bridge the gap as to find
the optimal way for 2-d object detection based on the
fundamental principles of object detection, which is
edge detection, and as edge detection is the base stone
for object detection, whose high level application are
object recognition. So to optimize the process of object
detection we need to optimize the process of edge
detection.
This report summarize the report regarding optimal
based edge detection, how do they achieved their goals
what are the preconditions for their algorithm to work.
And this report also covers the pros and cons of this
paper according to my perspective. This report also
covers evaluation of their work and future developments
in this field as it is relatively an old paper

Keywords
Edge Detection, Derivative of Gaussian (DOG), Double
derivative of Exponential function (DODE), Profiling,
Filtering, Smoothing operators

1. Motivation:All edge base shape detection methods are effected by

the same problem that some information is lost during
the process of edge formations or we can say edge
detection. Because the parameters are not defined based
on looking at the stats of the signal fidelity and the
algorithms are not smart enough to choose the optimal
parameters based on the distortion of the original signal.
So mostly the parameters are chosen globally, so they
didnt present the true picture of the scenario so author
of this paper decided to address that issue and come up
with optimal parameters to finally bridge the gap
generated at the lowest possible level of image
processing.

Fig: 1 Showing Lenna on the left and edges on the right

Lets look at the picture above you can see that even if
we removing most of the pixels from the left image we
can still understand the content of the picture (on the
right) like this picture is of a lady who is wearing a hat
and more, so we can easily conclude that edges in fact
represent the most interesting areas of the image.
Research in the field of human eye suggest that human
peripherals at the lowest possible level are also working
on principles of edge processing that helps us recognize
and categories things after wards and build the
connections.[1]
Now let me explain the Regions or
contours R that give us the description about the edges.
So a Region R is a set of connected (4 or 8 or n
connectivity) pixels that have the same neighbors or
relatively same neighbors.

2 Introduction:-

Fig: 2 showing concept of 4 and 8 connectivity [2].

So you can see from the above figure that if the pixels are
same as compared to the central pixels then those pixels
are considered to be in the Region R if one or more
pixel in R thats different from the rest of the pixels then
those pixels are called and boundary pixels.
Now you have understood the concepts of boundary so
edges are mostly the candidates from the boundary
regions, Sometime whole boundaries are considered as
edges but in some cases some thresholding throws a little
bit of those pixels.
There are many types of Edges some of the important one
are Roof edge, step edge and ramp edge. Step edges are
the ideal edges because they are good in localization and
they exist mostly in test images. I will explain the
Localization and detection in next section. Roof edge is
basically, when pixels are converging from dark to grey
and then instead of bright they turn dark again. Ramp
edges are mostly what we deal with in most of the images
as instead of a sharp change in the image its from dark to
less dark and eventually ending up to bright pixels or vice
versa. Following figure show different types of edges
explained above with their orientation.

The first column represent 4 signals with little bit of

Gaussian noise. First row has the Step edge, the ideal so
detection with the first derivative is the best and so is the
localization. But as you can see from the rest of the rows
as soon as the noise is added to the system the process
edge detection and localization is nearly impossible.
Mostly DOG (Derivative of Gaussian) or DOB
(Derivative of Box) are used for the detection and
localization process. But the author of this paper has
come up with quantitative measures that the DODE
(Double derivative of Exponential function) gives better
results than both of them. And to get the better detection
we need optimal parameters for de-noising the image.

3 The Procedure of Optimal based shape

detection:One dimensional smoothing operator:

Step 1:-

Fig: 3 Different types of Edges along with Orientation [3].

Normally there are two problems that relates to the

process of Edge extraction. Edge detection and edge
localization. To detect the shape optimally we need to find
out the optimal way for not only finding the edges but also
to localize the edges which mean how to represent, some
of the properties attached to the edges are its length, width
and thickness.
First derivative gives if there exist an edge or not but the
problem is there is a little bit of noise then the edge
detection via this process is nearly impossible. See figure
below [1]

Where F is the output frequency, the procedure is done

for one dimension smoothing operator which was later
extended to multiple dimensions, In the last equation one
can easily see that we need to find the optimal h for
both the values of X(edge ) along with the additive noise
N.

MSE (Mean squared error in term of frequency

domain can be represented as)

Step 2:Where = Radian Frequency

Represent the distortion from the equilibrium
position.
As you can see from 2 is using absolute values for the
angular frequencies which is later divided into both ve
and positive part. After wards 1 is subtracted from the
angular frequencies because of the Amplitude values. For
MSE output 2 we continue with the absolute values.
And () and () are spectral densities of X
and N

The author of the paper modelled intensity changes at an

object boundary as a step function (where the changes
are rapid) and some of the assumptions for the models
are that the boundary smooth or simply a connected
contour.
Let image
be represented as -- (A)

Here D is simply a connected region representing the

shape before moving
Following is a flow diagram of connected component
analysis used is the paper firstly its for a pixel that
doesnt belong to background

Step 3:
Apply Wiener filter to minimize criterion function which
is demonstrated below

Step 4:
As we have the step edge and the white noise so
applying the values from the frequency domain we have
the optimal filter as defined below.

Where:
d =
= magnitude of step edge
= Phase shift of cosine signals

Step 5:
Extending the one dimensional smoothing operator to
two dimensions

4
Extension of Optimal smoothing filter to
arbitrary shapes and Profiling Responses:-

The algorithm starts by giving the image (I) as an input

function then each of its pixels are scanned .Then each
pixel are checks to see if they dont belong to background
Then their neighbours are checked for component
initialization if neighbour is already labeled then assign
parent label to new pixel if not assign new label during
the first iteration.

Component relabeling step and re classification

I cant explain all the iteration steps hers so just

describing the output result where are pixels are labelled
according to the connectivity. Its like a water flow and
strong regions are connected with the same region number
Final step:-

0
1
2
3
4

0
1
1
3
3
3

1
2
1
1
1
1

2
2
2
1
1
2

3
2
2
2
2
2

4
2
2
2
2
4

All regions of the image are assigned the labels according

to the connectivity. So now moving on with the rest of
the procedure where we left at (A)
The boundary C =D be parameterized as

Shuffling of pixel labels continue until all pixels are

labelled and no pixel are left which are not added to the
list
The below example elaborate the process for more
understanding of the process.

Which explain mostly the intensity differences and l is

the level function. Then the Shape operator is inserted in
position and the responses are collected at the centroid of
the operators then maximum response is chosen as an
indication to the presence of the particular shape.

Initial step:-

0
1
2
3
4

0
1
1
0
0
0

1
0
1
1
1
1

2
0
0
1
1
0

3
0
0
0
0
0

4
0
0
0
0
1

Fig: 4 Binary images to show the working of CCA algorithm

Segmentation and initialization step:-

0
1
2
3
4

0
1
0
0
0
0

1
0
0
0
0
0

2
0
0
0
0
0

3
0
0
0
0
0

4
0
0
0
0
0

This first row and column tell about the index

values of the stored label initially we start with
copying a new matrix equally to size of given
image and initializing all with zeros except the first
element

Fig: 4 Response profiles of shapes

Figure 4 represent different shapes like triangle square

hexagon and how their profile propagate with noise as in
first column the gamma values are at 1.0 and in the
second column the noise values are around 5 but even
with the noise the shape is efficiently extracted based on
the approximation from the MSE. And with that prior
knowledge shapes are quickly and efficiently detected. I
cannot do much in term of graph because the plots are
poor and hardly visible and understandable even in the
paper.

5 Performance
Algorithm:-

and

evaluation

of

the

Firstly I can comment upon the results as the main

emphasis is to use DODE instead of DOG and when they
are evaluating the results they confessed and their results
showed that there is not much difference when doing
edge detection and both have nearly same performance
when calculating edge but there is a drastic improvement
in edge localization and I am sorry to put these picture
there but these are really important but unfortunately not
that visible. I could have redrawn them but I cant see
the step size and can falsify some of their claims so I am
sticking with the same figure.

Fig: 6 y axes are MSE and x axis operator width line represents DOG and ___
represent DODE.

As we can clearly see the major improvement is in

localization of edge and if we have that much gain we
must use DODE instead of DOG which is more effective
in case of vehicle detection

Fig: 5 y axes is MSE and x axis operator width line represents DOG and ___
represent DODE.

As you can see clearly from the above figure that DODE
and DOG are almost alike with a minor exception
between 2 and three where DOG is better than DODE.
The above graph shows the performance comparison of
both the routines while detecting edge for vehicle and they
are almost similar. So we can conclude from their result
that edge detection has nothing to do with the operator we
use, so that leaves a lot of research area to explore for the
upcoming researchers. Some extensions to better edge
detection in term of Hough Transform are also extension
of the same scheme.

The above stats are the improvement that can be achieved

using the profiling concept introduced in this paper and it
is really helpful as any shape can be detected accurately
and the detection rate can further be improved my
choosing the right maximas as discussed in the paper in
equation (2). Without prior is the working of algorithm
without prior shape profiling and see the missed detection
% are relatively high around 36.3% similarly high false
alarm rates to 54 %. When introduced the profiling most
of the vehicles are correctly classified and thus false alarm
rate is also very low. Localization of the shape is also well
defined as its been more precise to 2.109 PP.

6 Major Applications of Optimal edge based

Shape detection:
Some Major application for this optimal based shape
detection are already mentioned in the paper I will
mention them but I will extend them to the biological
perspective as the seminar is dealing with a major part in
biology for that so I read couple of other papers [4] and
[5] .

1) Cars Detection from Areal images:

Its can detect the shape of cars and categorize
them which in turn help us in looking for
parking space problem, like rather to expand the
area or not is there is enough space or not.

7) Culture Study in bacterium semi-automated

image analysis [5].
Initially I was not really sure if the algorithm can
really be used in this situation but as I progressed
.CCA (connected component analysis 9 part can
be used but not sure about the whole algorithm as
there are so many factors involved and the changes
are very slow per frame and I am not sure it might
approximate the minute change as they didnt
happen which is not we want but with some
manual parameters which can be set by the user it
can be used in certain aspect.

7 Some limitation and a little comparison to

other methods:-

2) Optimal face Detection:Instead of tracking the whole face which might be

computationally inefficient we can work or
particular shapes in image like eyes eyebrows and
nose and based on their position categorize a face
or a non-face which is way efficient and can
remove some restriction about orientation noise as
we are looking for targeted features as explained
in the paper.

3) Contour Detection and active Contours:-

Limitation:This paper is doing most of its calculation on DODE

based on MSE and I have recently read this paper [7]
which elaborated the advantages and disadvantages of
using MSE and in terms of image fidelity it can cause a
lot of problem, like even small or big changes can effect
MSE and it doesnt reflect the true picture. For example
look at the picture below [7]

As the author have shown that the algorithm work

really well for edge localization which is biggest
problem in fine detailed image as edges are
overlapping and make no sense. So using this
technique will solve those problems as this
techniques use the optimum filtering so all the
representation is preserved as shown in figure 13
of paper.

4) Selective object tracking :We can use the knowledge of profiling to track
efficiently any object as any object has some
orientation and that orientation can fall into any
category of shape which can be added to the
algorithm to lower the problem of false alarms
which is a big worry in object detection.

5) A synthetic
Program[6]:-

Genetic

Edge

Detection

A genetic circuit such as one mentioned in the

paper is using special engineered light sensors to
get the light between light and dark regions and
during the process of diffusion the tracking become
really difficult so using thins algorithm can
enhance some of the problems created during
transfusion or diffusion of the substance and one
can track the moment accurately because detection
here is not a big deal, localization is important.

6) Marine microorganism Monitoring [4]:As microorganism are really hard to visualize and
so are equally hard to localize or detect, in this
paper they are using temperature changes to give
them more hints about the presence or absence of
microorganism, which can be given as a parameter
to the profile and once those best maxima are
found we can use them efficiently for tracking of
even micro organisms

In the first column a is the reference image then some

noise and disorientation is added and its effect on MSE
is described like in 2 image from top left (b) MSE is 306
and in last image of the first column the MSE is 309 then
look at the third from right image in the second column
we have and MSE of 308 and most astonishing result
was in the picture right next to it here the MSE is 694
.which indicate a high distortion but when we see the
image in almost similar to the original picture , so this
approach of using DODE can in some situation not be
right to use.
-As some of the results are not extraordinary, especially
in terms of detection of actual edges, once can improve
that performance and leave the localization as it is and
then those results could still match the performance of
this algorithm as it will compensate for edge localization

Comparison to other methods:Last semester I worked with Igor in the field of

straight line detection[8] and I can say that lines can
be of more value than edges, whatever we do in the
end we still need some kind of thresholding in case
of depending solely on edge detection because there
might be so many false alarms . The work of that
paper was really wonderful as edges are detected
and based on criteria called line support region put
in a category to form a line. Gradient orientation is
used for the first time to explain some major
changes across the image.

Final Word:
Paper was really well written and I enjoyed reading it but
some of the figures are really hard to understand because
of the poor visibility and visualization method chosen by
the authors. I hope this report covers mostly all aspects of
the paper in detail and some other suggestions from my
side if some want to continue working in that domain.

7 References:[1] Ghosh, K., Sarkar, S., & Bhaumik, K. (2007). The

Theory of Edge Detection and Low-level Vision in
Retrospect. INTECH Open Access Publisher.

[2]www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/courses/compsci773s1c/lectur
es/ImageProcessing-html/neighbourhoods.gif

[3]http://campar.in.tum.de/twiki/pub/Chair/TeachingWs05
SegmentationRegistrationHauptseminar/02DoychevEdge
sFeaturesHandout.pdf

[4] B. Zhang, G.S. Sukhatme, A.A. Requicha, Adaptive

sampling for marine microorganism monitoring, in:
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots
and Systems, 2004.
[5] H. Daims and M Wagner, Quantification of
Uncultured Microorganisms by Fluorescence Microscopy
and Digital Image Analysis, Appl. Microbiol.
Biotechnol., 75, 23748 (2007).
[6] Tabor J, et al. A Synthetic Genetic Edge Detection
Program. Cell.2009;137:12721281.

The process of line formation is explained in the

above picture along with that process many
attributes related to edges which were missing in
this paper are utilized in the (Extraction of straight
line paper) some of these attributes are edge length
, steepness, sharpness ,orientation and more.
Personally if you ask me I would not totally depend
upon the information provided by the edges but the
profiling concept is the real deal which I think
added value to their work. I personally recommend
Hough transform extension for shape detection
because they are better in every aspect.

6 Future works:As I have mentioned during my talk there are many

alternative to MSE it would be really interesting to extend
this algorithm to incorporate any new method other than
MSE and compute the results there might be a few
surprises waiting. And as far as the second
recommendation I am 100 % sure it would be amazing
and give results in positive side and reduce the problem of
false alarms during object detection in 2-d if we combine
the power of CW-SSIM [7] complex wavelet structure
similarity index with the profiling concept explained in this
paper . It will definitely minimize the false alarms if not make
them zero.

[7] Z. Wang and A. C. Bovik, Mean squared error: Love

it or leave it? A new look at signal fidelity measures,
IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 98
117, Jan. 2009.
Book consulted:Gonzalez, R. C., & Woods, R. E. (2002). Digital image
processing. Prentice Hall, 10, 12-23.