Ellipse Detection using Hough Transform

Ata picture Ata · Jun 10, 2011 · Viewed 21.4k times · Source

using Hough Transform, how can I detect and get coordinates of (x0,y0) and "a" and "b" of an ellipse in 2D space?

This is ellipse01.bmp:

ellipse image

I = imread('ellipse01.bmp');
[m n] = size(I);
c=0;
for i=1:m
    for j=1:n
        if I(i,j)==1
        c=c+1;
        p(c,1)=i;
        p(c,2)=j;
        end
    end
end
Edges=transpose(p);
Size_Ellipse = size(Edges);
B = 1:ceil(Size_Ellipse(1)/2);
Acc = zeros(length(B),1);
a1=0;a2=0;b1=0;b2=0;
Ellipse_Minor=[];Ellipse_Major=[];Ellipse_X0 = [];Ellipse_Y0 = [];
Global_Threshold = ceil(Size_Ellipse(2)/6);%Used for Major Axis Comparison
Local_Threshold = ceil(Size_Ellipse(1)/25);%Used for Minor Axis Comparison
[Y,X]=find(Edges);
Limit=numel(Y);
Thresh = 150;
Para=[];

for Count_01 =1:(Limit-1)
  for Count_02 =(Count_01+1):Limit
    if ((Count_02>Limit) || (Count_01>Limit))
      continue
    end
    a1=Y(Count_01);b1=X(Count_01);
    a2=Y(Count_02);b2=X(Count_02);
    Dist_01 = (sqrt((a1-a2)^2+(b1-b2)^2));
    if (Dist_01 >Global_Threshold)
      Center_X0 = (b1+b2)/2;Center_Y0 = (a1+a2)/2;
      Major = Dist_01/2.0;Alpha = atan((a2-a1)/(b2-b1));
      if(Alpha == 0)
        for Count_03 = 1:Limit
          if( (Count_03 ~= Count_01) || (Count_03 ~= Count_02))
            a3=Y(Count_03);b3=X(Count_03);
            Dist_02 = (sqrt((a3 - Center_Y0)^2+(b3 - Center_X0)^2));
            if(Dist_02 > Local_Threshold)
              Cos_Tau = ((Major)^2 + (Dist_02)^2 - (a3-a2)^2 - (b3-b2)^2)/(2*Major*Dist_02);
              Sin_Tau = 1 - (Cos_Tau)^2;
              Minor_Temp = ((Major*Dist_02*Sin_Tau)^2)/(Major^2 - ((Dist_02*Cos_Tau)^2));
              if((Minor_Temp>1) && (Minor_Temp<B(end)))
                Acc(round(Minor_Temp)) = Acc(round(Minor_Temp))+1;
              end
            end
          end
        end
      end
      Minor = find(Acc == max(Acc(:)));
      if(Acc(Minor)>Thresh)
        Ellipse_Minor(end+1)=Minor(1);Ellipse_Major(end+1)=Major;
        Ellipse_X0(end+1) = Center_X0;Ellipse_Y0(end+1) = Center_Y0;
        for Count = 1:numel(X)
          Para_X = ((X(Count)-Ellipse_X0(end))^2)/(Ellipse_Major(end)^2);
          Para_Y = ((Y(Count)-Ellipse_Y0(end))^2)/(Ellipse_Minor(end)^2);
          if (((Para_X + Para_Y)>=-2)&&((Para_X + Para_Y)<=2))
            Edges(X(Count),Y(Count))=0;
          end
        end
      end
      Acc = zeros(size(Acc));
    end
  end
end

Answer

boechat107 picture boechat107 · Mar 5, 2014

Although this is an old question, perhaps what I found can help someone.

The main problem of using the normal Hough Transform to detect ellipses is the dimension of the accumulator, since we would need to vote for 5 variables (the equation is explained here):

ellipse equation

There is a very nice algorithm where the accumulator can be a simple 1D array, for example, and that runs in O3. If you wanna see code, you can look at here (the image used to test was that posted above).