2016/01/18 by Morimichi Nishigaki, Nishigaki, Morimichi, Cornelia Fermüller +1
Computer Science · #Advanced Image and Video Retrieval Techniques #Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Image Retrieval and Classification Techniques #Medical Image Segmentation Techniques
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1601.04669
openalex publication_date 2016/01/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Contours are salient features for image description, but the detection and localization of boundary contours is still considered a challenging problem. This paper introduces a new tool for edge processing implementing the Gestaltism idea of edge grouping. This tool is a mid-level image operator, called the Torque operator, that is designed to help detect closed contours in images. The torque operator takes as input the raw image and creates an image map by computing from the image gradients within regions of multiple sizes a measure of how well the edges are aligned to form closed convex contours. Fundamental properties of the torque are explored and illustrated through examples. Then it is applied in pure bottom-up processing in a variety of applications, including edge detection, visual attention and segmentation and experimentally demonstrated a useful tool that can improve existing techniques. Finally, its extension as a more general grouping mechanism and application in object recognition is discussed.