Proceedings of 2010 IEEE 17th International Conference on Image Processing
Adaptive Tri-Direction Edge Detection Operators based on the Spiral Architecture
1
Sonya Coleman, 1Bryan Gardiner, 2Bryan Scotney
1
School of Computing and Intelligent Systems, University of Ulster, Magee, BT48 7JL, Northern Ireland
2
School of Computing and Information Engineering, University of Ulster, Coleraine, BT52 1SA, Northern Ireland
ABSTRACT
We present a general approach to the computation of
adaptive tri-directional operators for use on hexagonal pixel-
based images, based on the spiral architecture. We show that
the use of Gaussian basis functions within the finite element
method provides a framework for a systematic design
procedure for operators that are adaptive to spiral
neighbourhoods through the use of an explicit scale
parameter. We evaluate the proposed operators using
simulated hexagonal images and provide comparative results
with the use of traditional rectangular operators.
Index Terms—hexagonal images, spiral architecture
1. INTRODUCTION
Traditionally, images are captured and displayed using
rectangular pixels, and several algorithms have been
developed for processing such images. Recently there has
been an increased interest in using hexagonal pixels for
image representation for many reasons, including their
ability to represent curved structures better than the tradition
use of square pixels. Additional advantages of the hexagonal
image structure include both spatial and spectral advantages:
equidistance of all pixel neighbours and improved spatial
isotropy of spectral response. Pixel spatial equidistance
facilitates the implementation of circular symmetric kernels
that is associated with an increase in accuracy when
detecting edges, both straight and curved [1, 7]. In addition,
recent work has highlighted the advantages of omni-
directional feature extraction [3], and in particular, Paplinski
[6] has introduced tri-directional feature extraction on
traditional rectangular pixel-based images. The use of a
hexagonal image structure naturally facilitates tri-directional
feature extraction by introducing three natural axes along
which directional derivative operators may be computed.
In [9], Sheridan introduced a unique addressing system,
known as the spiral architecture, that addresses each
hexagonal pixel with a single co-ordinate address, rather
than the two co-ordinate address scheme typically used with
rectangular image structures. The introduction of this single
addressing scheme makes the spiral architecture an
appropriate structure for real-time image processing of
hexagonal images. Using spiral addressing, spiral addition
and spiral multiplication, methods have been created for
image processing operations such as translation and rotation
978-1-4244-7994-8/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE 1961
September 26-29, 2010, Hong Kong
[4]. However, to date, only a few operators have been
developed specifically for use on hexagonal image
structures, e.g. [2], and in particular, the spiral architecture
has not been used as the developmental structure for
processing operators.
In this paper we present a design procedure for the
development of hexagonal tri-directional derivative
operators, based on the spiral architecture, that can be
applied directly to hexagonal images. The structure of each
spiral operator corresponds to a layer ( O ) in the spiral
architecture, and therefore each spiral operator contains 7 O
point values. We show that only one operator (x-directional
derivative) needs to be computed, and the other two
directional operators can then be obtained via appropriate
rotation.
2. IMAGE REPRESENTATION
We represent the hexagonal image by a spiral array of
samples of a continuous function u of image intensity on a
domain : . Figure 1 represents part of a hexagonal image
with nodes placed in the centre of each hexagonal pixel.
These nodes are the reference points for the development of
tri-directional derivative operators using an element based
method. Interconnecting pixel nodes produces edges that
form triangular elements, i.e. finite elements. This creates a
mesh of equilateral triangular elements that overlays the
image domain, as illustrated in Figure 1.
z y
x
Figure 1: Spiral image representation
As a hexagonal image can currently only be obtained by
resampling a standard rectangular pixel-based image, the re-
sampling technique used in this paper is a combination of
the approaches in [5, 13]. As in [5], we initially represent
ICIP 2010
each original rectangular pixel by a 7x7 sub-pixel block. I i is thus a "tent-shaped" function with support restricted to
Then, following [11], we cluster the sub-pixels to form a small spiral neighbourhood centred on node i consisting of
hexagonal pixels throughout the image. only those elements that have node i as a vertex. We then
may approximately represent the image u over a spiral
3. TRI-DIRECTIONAL OPERATORS
neighbourhood : iO by a function
In recent work [2], we have shown how a finite element
based approach can be used to create adaptive hexagonal U ¦U I i i (2)
operators based on the construction of two independent
directional derivative operators aligned in the x- and y- in which the parameters ^U ` j are the sampled image
directions using simple nearest neighbour scaling. Here we intensity values. In this paper the spiral neighbourhood
present tri-directional operators, i.e. three hexagonal structure follows the structure of the spiral architecture, and
operators that are aligned along the x-, y- and z- hexagonal hence the Layer 1 and Layer 2 operators have the 7-point
axes and the operator neighbourhood structure is based on and 49-point structures as illustrated in Figure 3.
the spiral architecture. The tri-directional operators can be Layer 2
easily developed as only one operator needs to be computed: 22 23

say, the x- directional operator. This operator can then be 12 13 21 20 24 Layer 1

rotated by 60 $ and 120 $ to obtain the y- and z- directional 11 10 14 26 25 32 33

derivative operators respectively. Such rotation is not 16 15 2 3 31 30 34

possible when we construct Cartesian based operators on the 62 63 1 0 4 36 35
hexagonal image structure. Redundancy exists between the
61 60 64 6 5 42 43
three operator masks of a tri-directional operator, allowing,
for example, the x-directional operator mask to be computed 66 65 52 53 41 40 44

as a combination of the other two operator masks using the 51 50 54 46 45

relationship x y  z . This is not considered to be a major 56 55

weakness of the operator design as this relationship

facilitates the implementation of Cartesian axes operators if
required by appropriate combination of the tri-directional
masks. It should be noted that, although the hexagonal
structure naturally contains three axes, we only ever use two
axes in the co-ordinate system in order to ensure a unique
representation. Hence, we have chosen to work with the x-
and y- axes, providing a co-ordinate system as shown in
Figure 2.
y
Figure 3: Layer 1 and Layer 2 of the Spiral Architecture
1 2
corresponding to spiral operator neighbourhoods : i and : i
respectively
As we are only concerned initially with the development of
a x-directional derivative operator, a weak form of the first
order x-directional derivative is obtained by considering
only the x derivative term, multiplying it by a test function
v  H 1 , and integrating on the spiral image domain : iO to
 1 , 1  0 ,1 give
wu
³ wx vd: i
O
E (u ) (3)
e2 : iO

e3 e1 In the finite element method a finite-dimensional subspace

 1,0  i 0 ,0  1,0  x S h  H 1 is used for function approximation. Our design
procedure incorporates a finite-dimensional test space
e4 e6 TVh  H 1 that explicitly embodies the parameter V , related
e5 to the Layer O , enabling the development of adaptive
derivative operators. Hence, we use a test function \ iO that
0 ,1 1,1
is restricted to have support over the spiral operator
Figure 2: Two axes hexagonal co-ordinate system
neighbourhood : iO . The test function is then used in the
4. OPERATOR DESIGN weak form of the first derivative operator providing the
For the derivation of the primary operator, the x-directional functional
operator, with any node i we associate a piecewise linear wu
E iO (U ) ³ wx \
O
i d: iO (4)
basis function I i which has the properties :i O

­1 at node i To illustrate the implementation of the Level 1 first order

Ii ® (1) spiral operator, consider the Level 1 spiral structure in
¯0 at node j z i
Figure 3. Here the spiral neighbourhood covers a set of 6

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triangular elements ^e m ` , (as illustrated in Figure 2), where Layer 1 and Layer 2 hexagonal spiral neighbourhood
operators (see Figure 3), which are approximately equivalent
a test function \ iO is associated with the central node i and
in size to the 3x3 and 7x7 conventional rectangular
shares common support with the six neighbouring basis operators respectively. Therefore, the two hexagonal
functions I i . Hence E iO (U ) can be computed over the six operator sizes will be denoted as S1 and S 2 throughout the
elements in the spiral neighbourhood : iO by substituting the remainder of this paper.
image representation (equation (2)) into the functional
5. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
E iO (U ) , which yields For performance evaluation, we create hexagonal pixel-
N based images, as described in Section 2 and compare the
E iO (U ) ¦ K OU ij i (5) Layer 1 and Layer 2 operators from our proposed approach
i 1
with the traditional derivative operators [8] applied directly
where
to standard square-based images (denoted as Sq3 and Sq7,
K ijO ¦k m ,O
ij (6) respectively).
m | e m  : iO S2 Sq7 S1 Sq3

1
m ,O
and k ij is the element integral
wI j 0.8

kijm , O ³ wx
\ iO d :iO (7)
0.6

FOM
O
The test functions \ i used in this operator design are a set
of Gaussian basis functions \ iO , i 1,..., N , of the form
0.4

§
¨  x  xi  
2 1

 y  y i 2   z  z i 2  ·¸ (8) 0.2
¨ 3 ¸
¨ ¸
¨ 2V 2 ¸
1 ¨ ¸
\ iO e © ¹ 0
1 5 10 20 50 100 No Noise
2SV 2
SNR

As k ijm , O involves a Gaussian function, numerical integration (a) 45$ Oriented edge
is used to approximate the operator integral. On completion S2 Sq7 S1 Sq3

1
of the integration, the primary x-directional spiral operator,
equation (9), is constructed by finite element assembly to
0.8
compute the gradient operator along the x-directional axis.
This spiral operator is denoted by S1x , with co-efficient 0.6
values of a and b being 0.144 and 0.288 respectively.
FOM

ª a a º 0.4
x « »
S1 « b 0  b» (9)
«¬ a a »¼ 0.2

By rotating the co-efficients of the x-directional operator

0
anti-clockwise by 60 $ and 120 $ , the y- and z- directional 1 5 10 20 50 100 No Noise
SNR
operators can be readily obtained respectively as (b) Horizontal edge
ª a b º ª b a º Figure 4. Figure of Merit results comparing the tri-directional spiral
« » « »
S1 y  a 0  a S1 z «  a 0  a » (10) operators with equivalent standard use of square operators
« »
«¬ b a »¼ «¬ a b »¼ In order to accurately measure the performance of the spiral
When calculating the gradient response for tri-directional gradient operators, we have modified the well-known Figure
derivative operators, redundancy is introduced due to the of Merit technique to accommodate the use of hexagonal
relationships by rotation between the three operators. pixel-based images. Figure 4 shows that the proposed S1
Therefore, by directly using only operators S x and S y , the tri-directional spiral operator has increased accuracy over
gradient magnitude equation [10] for tri-directional the equivalent square 3u 3 operator (Sq3) in all evaluated
operators is represented as edge directions, and S 2 has similar performance to Sq7,
2 with the greatest improvement seen in the case of very high
G ( S x ) 2  ( S y ) 2  S x .S y ) (11) noise levels. Further visual comparison of the tri-directional
3
adaptive operators is presented in Figure 5, where we show
In this paper, two operator sizes are illustrated, namely the the Lena image, both the original and the re-sampled

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 6. CONCLUSION
We have presented a design procedure for first order tri-
directional derivative operators, developed for use on
hexagonal images. Here, the operator structure is based on
the spiral architecture, where each operator size corresponds
to a layer in the spiral architecture. The development of the
tri-directional operator is presented with only one operator
mask needing to be calculated, and the remaining two masks
found by 600 and 1200 anti-clockwise rotation. Although it
appears at first that the operator structure presented offers
(a) Spiral image (b) Original image only coarse scale processing, fine scale processing can be
readily obtained via the use of the virtual spiral architecture
[12] that works at sub-pixel level.
Using the Figure of Merit, we present performance
evaluation for our operator framework and we present visual
comparison of operator output responses. The performance
evaluation and visual output combined with the fact that a
hexagonal pixel image representation contains 13.5% less
pixels than the equivalent rectangular pixel image
representation [5], makes hexagonal pixel based images
promising for real-time imaging.
(c) S1 (d) Sq3
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