Circular Object Detection Using a Modified Hough Transform

Smereka, Marcin; Dulęba, Ignacy

doi:10.2478/v10006-008-0008-9

Abstract

A practical modification of the Hough transform is proposed that improves the detection of low-contrast circular objects. The original circular Hough transform and its numerous modifications are discussed and compared in order to improve both the efficiency and computational complexity of the algorithm. Medical images are selected to verify the algorithm. In particular, the algorithm is applied to localize cell nuclei of cytological smears visualized using a phase contrast microscope.

References

Atherton T. J. and Kerbyson D. J. (1993). The coherent circle Hough transform, Proceedings of the British Machine Vision Conference, Guildford, UK, pp. 269-278.
Search in Google Scholar
Atherton T. J. and Kerbyson D. J. (1993). Using phase to represent radius in the coherent circle Hough transform, IEE Coloquium on the Hough Transform5: 1-4.10.5244/C.7.27
Search in Google Scholar
Atherton T. J. and Kerbyson D. J. (1999). Size invariant circle detection, Image and Vision Computing17(11):795-803.10.1016/S0262-8856(98)00160-7
Search in Google Scholar
Atiquzzaman M. (1999). Coarse-to-fine search technique to detect circles in images, International Journal of Advanced Manufacture Technologies15(2): 96-102.10.1007/s001700050045
Search in Google Scholar
Chan T. F. and Vese L. A. (2001). Active contours without edges, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing10(2): 266-277.10.1109/83.902291
Search in Google Scholar
Duda R. O. and Hart P. E. (1972). Use of the Hough transform to detect lines and curves in pictures, Communications of the ACM15(1): 11-15.10.1145/361237.361242
Search in Google Scholar
Elder J. H. and Zucker S.W. (1996). Computing contour closure, Proceedings of the 4-th European Conference on Computer Vision- Volume I, Cambridge, UK, 1, 399-412.10.1007/BFb0015553
Search in Google Scholar
Fitzgibbon A., Pilu M. and Fisher R. B. (1999). Direct least square fitting of ellipses, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Inteligence21(5): 477-480.10.1109/34.765658
Search in Google Scholar
Gerig G. and Klein F. (1986). Fast contour identification through efficient Hough transform and simplified interpretation strategy, Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Pattern Recognition, Paris, France, pp. 498-500.
Search in Google Scholar
Glab G., Florczak K., Jaronski J., and Licznerski T. (2001). Gynecological Cyto-diagnosis in Phase Contrast Microscopy, Blackhorse, Warsaw (in Polish).
Search in Google Scholar
Guil N. and Zapata E. L. (1997). Low order circle and ellipse Hough transform, Journal of Pattern Recognition30(10): 1729-1744.10.1016/S0031-3203(96)00191-4
Search in Google Scholar
Hough P. V. C. (1962). Methods and means for recognizing complex patterns, U.S. Patent 3; 069; 654.
Search in Google Scholar
Kavianpour A., Shoari S. and Bagherzadeh N. (1994). A new approach for circle detection on multiprocessors, Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing20(2): 256-260.10.1006/jpdc.1994.1025
Search in Google Scholar
Kimme C., Ballard D. and Sklansky J. (1975). Finding circles by an array of accumulators, Communitations of the ACM18(2): 120-122.10.1145/360666.360677
Search in Google Scholar
McLaughlin R. A. and Alder M. D. (1998). Technical report— The Hough transform versus the upwrite, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence20(4): 396-400.10.1109/34.677267
Search in Google Scholar
Minor L. G. and Sklansky J. (1981). Detection and segmentation of blobs in infrared images, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics11(3): 194-201.10.1109/TSMC.1981.4308652
Search in Google Scholar
Peura M. and Iivarinen J. (1997). Efficiency of simple shape descriptors, Aspects of Visual Form, Proceedings of the 3-rd International Workshop on Visual Forum, Capri, Italy, pp. 443-451.
Search in Google Scholar
Ray N., Acton S. T. and Ley K. F. (2002). Tracking leukocytes in vivo with shape and size constrained active contours, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging21(10): 1222-1235.10.1109/TMI.2002.806291
Search in Google Scholar
Rosin P. (1996). Assessing error of fit functions for ellipses, Graphical Models and Image Processing58(5): 494-502.10.1006/gmip.1996.0041
Search in Google Scholar
Rosin P. (2000). Measuring shape: Ellipticity, rectangularity, and triangularity, Proceedings of the 15-th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Barcelona, Spain, pp. 1952-1955.
Search in Google Scholar
Ross K. F. A. (1967). Phase Contrast and Interference Microscopy for Cell Biologists, Edward Arnold Publishers, London.
Search in Google Scholar
Shashua A. and Ullman S. (1991). Grouping contours by iterated pairing network, Neural Info3: 335-341.
Search in Google Scholar
Smereka M. (2003). Nuclei recognition in phase contrast microscopy images, Proceedings of the 3-rd International Conference on Computer Recognition Systems KOSYR, Mitków, Poland, pp. 35-40.
Search in Google Scholar
World Health Organization. (1988). Cytological Screening in the Control of Cervical Cancer: Technical Guidelines, World Health Organization, Geneva.
Search in Google Scholar
Zhu Q., Payne M. and Riordan V. (1996). Edge linking by a directional potential functions, Image and Vision Computing14(1): 59-70.10.1016/0262-8856(95)01040-8
Search in Google Scholar

Circular Object Detection Using a Modified Hough Transform

Abstract

Paradigm

My account