Edge detection in contaminated images, using cluster analysis

Abstract

In this paper we present a method to detect edges in images. The method consists of using a 3x3 pixel mask to scan the image, moving it from left to right and from top to bottom, one pixel at a time. Each time it is placed on the image, an agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis is applied to the eight outer pixels. When there is more than one cluster, it means that window is on an edge, and the central pixel is marked as an edge point. After scanning all the image, we obtain a new image showing the marked pixels around the existing edges of the image. Then a thinning algorithm is applied so that the edges are well defined. The method results to be particularly efficient when the image is contaminated. In those cases, a previous restoration method is applied.