An approach for color edge detection with automatic threshold detection

Abstract

Edge is an important feature for image segmentation and object detection. Edge detection reduces the amount of data needed to process by removing unnecessary features. Edge detection in color images is more challenging than edge detection in gray-level images. This paper proposes a method for edge detection of color images with automatic threshold detection. The proposed algorithm extracts the edge information of color images in RGB color space with fixed threshold value. The algorithm works on three channels individually and the output is fused to produce one edge map. The algorithm uses the Kuwahara filter to smoothen the image, sobel operator is used for detecting the edge. A new automatic threshold detection method based on histogram data is used for estimating the threshold value. The method is applied for large number of images and the result shows that the algorithm produces effective results when compared to some of the existing edge detection methods. � 2012 Springer-Verlag.