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Title of Thesis: A non-invasive technique for burn area measurement Jong-Daw Yu, Master of Science Thesis directed by: Stanley Dunn, Ph.D Rutgers University Biomedical Engineering Department Peter Engler, Ph.D. New Jersey Institute of Technology Electrical Engineering Department Abstract The need for a reliable and accurate method for assessing the surface area of burn wounds currently exists in the branch of medicine involved with burn care and treatment. The percentage of the surface area is of critical importance in evaluating fluid replacement amounts and nutritional support during the 24 hours of postburn therapy. A noninvasive technique has been developed which facilitates the measurement of burn area. The method we shall describe is an inexpensive technique to measure the burn areas accurately. Our imaging system is based on a technique known as structured light. Most structured light computer imaging systems, including ours, use triangulation to determine the location of points in three dimensions as the intersection of two lines: a ray of light originating from the structured light projector and the line of sight determined by the location of the image point in the camera plane. The geometry used to determine 3D location by triangulation is identical to the geometry of other stereo-based vision system, including the human vision system. Our system projects a square grid pattern from 35mm slide onto the patient. The grid on the slide is composed of uniformly spaced orthogonal stripes which may be indexed by row and column. Each slide also has square markers placed in between the lines of the grid in both the horizontal and vertical directions in the center of the slide.

Our system locates intersections of the projected grid stripes in the camera image and determines the 3D location of the corresponding points on the body by triangulation. Four steps are necessary in order to reconstruct 3D locations of points on the surface of the skin: camera and projector calibration; image processing to locate the grid intersections in the camera image; grid labeling to establish the correspondence between projected and imaged intersections; and triangulation to determine three-dimensional position. Three steps are required to segment burned portion in image: edge detection to get the strongest edges of the region; edge following to form a closed boundary; and region filling to identify the burn region. After combining the reconstructed 3D locations and segmented image, numerical analysis and geometric modeling techniques are used to calculate the burn area. We use cubic spline interpolation, bicubic surface patches and Gaussian quadrature double integration to calculate the burn wound area. The accuracy of this technique is demonstrated The benefits and advantages of this technique are, first, that we don't have to make any assumptions about the shape of the human body and second, there is no need for either the Rule-of-Nines, or the weight and height of the patient. This technique can be used for human body shape, regardless of weight proportion, size, sex or skin pigmentation. The low cost, intuitive method, and demonstrated efficiency of this computer imaging technique makes it a desirable alternative to current methods and provides the burn care specialist with a sterile, safe, and effective diagnostic tool in assessing and investigating burn areas.

A Non-Invasive Technique for Burn. Area Measurement

by Jong-Daw

Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the New Jersey Institute of Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science 1989

APPROVAL SHEET Title of Thesis : A Non-Invasive Technique of Burn Area Measurement Name of Candidate : Jong-Daw Yu Master of Science, 1989 Thesis and Abstract Approved :

Stanley Dunn, Ph.D Rutgers University Biomedical Engineering Department


Peter Engler, Ph.D New Jersey Institute of Technology Electrical Engineering Department


David Kristol, Ph.D New Jersey Institute of Technology Biomedical Engineering Department


VITA Name : Jong-Daw Yu Permanent address :

Degree and date to be conferred : M.S., 1989 Date of birth : Place of birth : Collegiate institutions attended


Chung-Yuang Christ. Univ. 9/80-5/84 New Jersey Institute of Technology

Degree Date of Degree B.S.

May 1984

1/87-5/89 M.S.

May 1989

Major : Biomedical Engineering

Contents 1




Automatic Calibration for Camera and Projector


2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 3

Assumptions Camera Calibration Projector Calibration Automatic Calibration Procedure

Computing Three Dimensional Coordinates

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5

Segmentation 3.1.1 Reflectance Compensation 3.1.2 Bimean Clustering Classical Thinning Algorithm Intersection Detection Grid Labeling Triangulation

5 6 8 9 15

16 16 17 17 18 19 20

4 Segmenting the Burn Area 4.1 Edge Extraction Followed by Edge Following 4.1.1 Edge Extraction 4.1.2 Edge Following 4.2 Multi-level thresholding



Surface Representation


5.1 5.2



Cubic Spline Bicubic Surface Patch

21 21 31 39


Estimating Surface Area


6.1 6.2 6.3

66 72 73

Forming the normal to the patch Gaussian Quadrature Reforming the Surface Patch for Irregular Shapes


T Results and Conclusions 7.1 Automatic Calibration 7.2 Segmentation 7.3 Cubic Spline Interpolation 7.4 Surface Area 7.5 Conclusions Bibliography

91 91 92 94 94 96 115

List of Figures 2.1 2.2 2.3

The calibration system setup The pattern of the camera calibration box The pattern of the projector slide

10 12 13

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9

A 3 x 3 constant region A 3 x 3 two-valued region A 5 x 5 window The flow chart of Edge Extraction Algorithm The directions of eight neighbors Search Area Large search area The result of basic ISODATA Display the histogram

23 24 26 32 35 36 38 44 45


A parametric surface patch


6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9

Surface Area Normal vector to a surface Case 1. One out of four points lie on the burn area Case 2. Two out of four points lie on the burn area Case 3. Three out of four points lie on the burn area Special case Determining a parametric point on bicubic surface Reparametrization of a truncated curve The definition of boundary curves and corner points

65 68 74 75 76 77 78 80 80

7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7f8

The accuracy of the calibration procedure The image of a burned wound patient The result of edge extraction The edge image and the potential edge image The result of edge following The result of multiple isodata of burned patient's image The result of multiple isodata from compensated burned patient image . The Image of Burn Patient iii

93 97 98 99 100 101 102 103

7.9 The image of Burn Patient with the Sturctured light 7.10 The result of reflectance compensation 7.11 The result of bimean 7.12 The result of classical thinning 7.13 The result of intersection detection 7.14 The result of surface interpolation 7.15 The interpolated points 7.16 The result of edge extraction 7.17 The result of edge following 7.18 The result of multi-level thresholding 7.19 The result of manual contouring

104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114

List of Tables 7.1 The mean and rms error of calibration procedure 7.2 The surface area of disk 7.3 The surface area of square.

92 94 95

Chapter 1

Introduction There are many medical researchers and physicians who have, over the past century, studied the problem of estimating the surface area of the human body. For the diagnosis and treatment of burn patients, knowing the surface area is important for establishing initial fluid replacements, nutritional requirements, and an initial prognosis for the patient [7]. Once the surface area of the burn wound can be accurately determined, the wound healing progression may be monitored in response to several topical healing ointments during the course of burn therapy which allows for the evaluation of pharmaceutical agents and their efficiency in reducing the wound area. In 1915, Dubois and Dubois (14] modeled anatomic sections of the body into a series of cylinders each having an area equal to the circumference times the height. The final formula which they derived is :

The formula takes into account the large interpersonal difference in body fluid and stature since both weight and height are accounted for in the formula, and has since been accepted as a standard in determining the total body surface area.



In 1944 Lund and Browder [35] developed a burn chart and diagrams for both adults and children. The most widely used method for determining the surface area was developed in 1947, by Pulaski and Tennison called the Rule-of-Nines in which the various body segments are represented as percentages that are multiples of nine. The Rule-of-Nines was found to be in close agreement when compared with the Lund and Browder chart [33]. The disadvantages of both the Lund and Browder chart and the Rule-of-Nines are that they all require visual estimation on the part of the physician. Sizeable errors occur in estimating the percent total body surface area. The degree of the error varies widely among several observers estimating the area of the same burn patient when using the Rule-of-Nines method; thus attempts have been made to directly measure the burn areas and then determine the percentage total body surface area (%TBSA). During the last decade, many researchers have used the planimeter to estimate surface area. The recent research using such techniques include Nichart, Bryant, Edlich in 1985 [43], Fuller, Mansour, Engler and Sinister in 1985 [23], and Scott-Conner and Conner in 1988 [57]. But they all required the user to draw the contour of a burn portion on a diagram of the computer screen or a plotter. In 1987, Miss Rath presented her master thesis, the Noncontacting Surface Area Assessment of Burn Wounds Using Computer Image Methods at NJIT [54]. Her technique involved projecting an orthogonal grid onto the surface to be measured, and capturing the image on video tape for processing by a digitizer. The drawbacks in her paper are: first, she had to measure the distance between projector and object and the distance between camera and object manually, in other words she had to compute the area of a pixel in linear units squared in the 3D Cartesian coordinate system; second, she as-


sumed the object or human body consisted of cylinders; third, she didn't mention how to get the contour of the burn area; fourth, she reduced the 3D problem to 2D which means she didn't consider the curvature or the normal vector of the surface. Since we live in a three-dimensional world, one of the intuitive ways to obtain the three-dimensional properties of an object, in our case is the human body, is using sterometric techniques. The observable domain of an object is delineated by the surface encompassing the object. The technology to obtain three-dimensional spatial coordinates of a sample of points on the surface of an object is called surface digitization. The process of doing surface digitization without human interaction will be auto-surface digitization [50]. Basically, there are two types of sterometric techniques. One is the active binocular system, another is the passive stereo system. Applications of active sensing in the binocular system involve triangulation. The construction of an active binocular system is identical to that of a passive stereo system, expcet that one of the cameras is replaced by a controlled light source. The light source selectively illuminates the scene, and the illuminated portion can be readily detected in the image with triangulation to recover the spatial position. The light patterns can be points or lines [29], [8], or complicated pattern such as orthogonal grids [48],[47],[46],[52], [22],[20],[21],[39], [60], [25], [50], [51], [58], [59], or sets of parallel stripes [11],[65],[64], [66]. The light sources are laser, Xray, or ordinary structured white light. The system described in this paper falls into the category of active binocular computer-image system. The advantage of our image system is that there is no biological risk of using lasers and/or X-rays, instead we are using a 35mm projector as a light source.

Chapter 2

Automatic Calibration for Camera and Projector One generally does not know anything about the imaging geometry when looking at a picture. For example, the focal length and location of the camera are both unknown. However, people can produce an excellent qualitative description of scene content apparently without being able to deduce these imaging parameters. How the human visual system can accomplish this task is still a mystery. In order to recover depth, shape and other scene properties using known computational techniques, we must first construct a quantitative model describing the geometric relationship between the scene, the camera and the image. One way to state this problem is: given a set of correspondences between a known three-dimension configuration of points and their locations in a single two-dimension image, determine the parameters of the camera that produced the image. Fischler and Bolles [19] show that if at least six correspondences between world points (with known 3D locations) and image points can be established , then it is possible to determine the twelve coefficients of the 3 x 4 collineation matrix that specifies the mapping (in homogeneous coordinates) from 3-space to 2-space.



Camera calibration is the determination of the correspondence between points in the camera image and points in physical space. Only when the camera is properly calibrated can its 2D raster coordinates be translated into real-world locations for the objects in its field of view. The same approach is used for projector calibration.

2.1 Assumptions Before discussing the meaning of the camera calibration matrix and the projector calibration matrix, we have to make some assumptions about the mathematical model for camera and projector. In the following derivation we first assume A that the lens of the camera behaves as an ideal, thin lens; B that the pixel matrix is aligned with the external coordinate system;

C that the reflecting surface is perfectly diffuse; D that the pixel raster is ideal.

The ideal thin lens assumption states that the lens can be replaced by a pinhole [9], [10], [30]. The location of this equivalent pinhole is called the optical center of the lens. The alignment assumption states that the pixel rows must be parallel to the plane of light, and that the columns hence are perpendicular. The diffuse-surface assumption requires that the intensity of the reflected light be independent of reflection angle, and the assumption of an ideal pixel raster requires that the camera be noise-free and of infinite resolution.


2.2 Camera Calibration The camera calibration matrix represents the functional relationship between points in the 3D object-centered coordinate system and the pixel location of the projected point in the camera plane and it is a 3 x 4 matrix in homogeneous coordinates. Equation 2.1 represents the camera calibration matrix.

The values of the camera calibration coefficients ti depend on the orientation, translation, focal distance, and scaling of the camera relative to the three-dimensional scene. An image plane is placed between the lens and the object so that the image plane is perpendicular to the optical axis of the lens and at a distance of one focal length from the lens center. The projection of an object point onto the image plane is determined as the intersection of the image with the line connecting the object point and the lens center (optical center of the lens). Without loss of generality, we may assume that the z-axis in the object coordinate system is perpendicular to the image plane and the calibration box. If f is the focal length of the camera and (x, y, z) the object point coordinates, then by using similar triangles we can express the image plane coordinates (u, v) as :

Equations 2.2 and 2.3 express u and v as nonlinear functions of x, y and z. Since


using these equations to compute the camera and projector calibration parameters involves solving simultaneous nonlinear equations which is very difficult, we shall use homogeneous coordinates as the mathematical representation with which one can express the perspective transformation as a linear transformation. In homogeneous coordinates, a three-dimensional Cartesian vector (x, y, z) is represented by a four component vector (wx, wy, wz, w) where w is an arbitrary constant. The Cartesian coordinates of a point are recovered from the homogeneous coordinates by dividing each of the first three components by the last component. The following matrix equation in homogeneous coordinates represents the camera image formation process which maps the point (xi, y i , z i ) in the objected centered coordinates onto the point (ui, vi) in the camera image plane

These linear equations in the homogeneous coordinates of equation 2.4 are equivalent to the following system of two equations involving the Cartesian coordinates

The purpose of the camera calibration procedure is to solve for the unknown elements t o ,

of the camera calibration matrix.

If we know the coordinates (x i , yi, z i ) for 6 or more points and the coordinates of their projections (obi, vi) in the camera image plane then the unknown camera calibration matrix elements may be found by setting t 11= 1 and determining the reminding 11 elements of the calibration matrix as the least square solution of the overdetermined


linear system of equation 2.6

2.3 Projector Calibration The elements of the projector calibration matrix depend on the position and orientation of the projector relative to the object-centered coordinates, the focal length of the projector, and a scale factor which takes into account the spacing of the grid stripes which are the projected pattern, which will be shown later. Since we have already determined the camera calibration matrix, the object-centered coordinates of points in space (xi, yi


z i ) and the corresponding row and column of the

projected grids (pi, qi), solving for the unknown elements of the projector calibration matrix is identical to solving for the unknown elements of the camera matrix


is called projector calibration matrix. By the same token, if we know the coordinates of the object points (xi, y i , z i ) and the coordinates of their corresponding projector points (pi, qi), the unknown projector calibration matrix elements may be found by setting In 1 and determining the 11 elements of the projector calibration matrix as the least square solution of equation 2.7

2.4 Automatic Calibration Procedure The automatic calibration procedure is one of the unique features in our system. Whenever we are dealing with stereophotogramrnetry techniques, it is necessary for the camera/lighting configuration ( in our case is camera and projector ) to be calibrated; that is, for the precise relationship to be established between points on the image and their corresponding coordinates in the external world. The calibration must, in principle, be performed each time the camera and projector system are demounted or modified.


Figure 2.1: The calibration system setup

The purpose of automatic camera and projector calibration is to solve for the calibration matrices without human intervention such as giving initial values for certain parameters by guessing or choosing certain system parameters manually. Our method relies on grid labeling using the marked grid to obtain a set of 3D positions and their corresponding image plane coordinates for both camera and projector calibration. The setup of the system is shown in Figure 2.1. The camera is calibrated first. A picture of the marked grid is pasted on the side


of a box which is called the "calibration box" and placed at two known object centered positions in the camera's field of view. Each image is processed by the sequence of steps described in Chapter 3 to determine the 2D locations of the intersections in the image plane. The 3D locations are determined from the grid labels, known scale of the pattern and known position of the box in the object centered coordinate system. The camera parameters are computed by equation 2.6. In order to simplify the calculation, the stripes on the calibration box have one inch distance between adjacent stripes horizontally and vertically. See Figure 2.2. The projector calibration is determined next. The picture of the marked grid on the box is replaced by a blank piece of paper, and the box is repositioned at the first position. The slide with the pattern shown in Figure 2.3 is placed in the projector and illuminates the box. The camera image is saved, the box is repositioned at the second calibration position, and the second image is taken. Each image is processed by the procedure in Chapter 3 to determine the 2D location of the intersections and their grid labels. From the 2D location and the camera calibration matrix, each intersection is back projected to its location on the box in the object centered coordinate systemf This is repeated for each intersection on both projector images . The 3D position for each detected intersection point on each projector image is calculated using


Figure 2.2: The pattern of camera calibration box


Figure 2.3: The pattern of projector slide



From the grid labels and 3D locations, the projector calibration matrix is computed from equation 2.7.

Chapter 3

Computing Three Dimensional Coordinates In order to calculate the surface area of a burn wound patient, we need to know how to get the 3D position by using our structured light system. In this chapter, we present algorithms and implementations due largely to Richard Keizer, a Ph.D candidate at Rutgers University, and reported in [16],[17],[31]. Because we use the white light as the structured light in our system, we need additional image processing to accurately locate the grid intersections in the camera image due to the poorer contrast of the white light stripes as compared to laser beams, and due to the fact that the projected white light stripes can not be simultaneously in sharp focus over the entire body. The following steps are used to find the 3D positions with structured light and can be utilized to accurately locate the structured white light grid intersections. 1. Segmentation. 2. Line Thinning. 3. Intersection Detection. 15


4. Grid Labeling. 5. Triangulation.

3.1 Segmentation The first step is to extract the structured light stripes in the camera image by segmentation. We have used a two step segmentation procedure consisting of reflectance compensation followed by bimean thresholding.

3.1.1 Reflectance Compensation This procedure removed the brightness variation due to the variations in the reflectivity of the human skin. Theoretically, the image intensity due to reflected light from a surface patch illuminated by a single light source is given by

where l(x, y) is the image intensity at pixel location (x, y), L(x, y) is the intensity of the incident light at the corresponding point on the objects surface, and R(x, y) is the reflectivity of the surface [28]. The reflectance compensation algorithm begins with estimating the term R(x, y) in equation 3.1 and then dividing the image intensity by this estimate to obtain an estimate of the incident illumination L(x, y). Assuming that R(x, y) varies slowly compared to the grid stripes spacing, we can estimate R(x, y) by the median of the intensities of the image pixels inside a neighborhood centered at (x, y). We recover the illumination by dividing the intensity by the estimate of the surface reflectivity. In practice dividing


I(x, y) by the median is unstable in the background since the local median levels are

small. In our system, we add the global median to the local ( neighborhood ) median before dividing. Thus, this can avoid overcompensating in the background. 3.1.2 Bimean Clustering

This procedure is used to extract the grid stripes from the compensated image. Mathematically, this procedure computes the values of u and v such that

and the value of k such that

is minimized where x 1 ≤ x 2 ≤...≤

zn. Practically, the index k is the gray level

above which the gray levels belong to the object, and the cluster of gray levels below the index k belongs to the background. In other words, Bimean clustering classifies image pixels according to their gray level as belonging to one of two classes: object (the stripes) and background (the body). The value of the threshold separating object from background is determined from the constraint that the sum of the intraclass distances to the means is minimized for both classes. This allows us to reliably extract small objects from large image.

3.2 Classical Thinning Algorithm After the segmentation procedures, we make the grid stripes of the segmented image exactly one pixel wide by shrinking each stripe to its "skeleton". The algorithm we use is called the classical thinning algorithm [4].


3.3 Intersection Detection After the thinning procedure, the stripes are exactly one pixel wide and are connected in the 8-neighbors sense. The candidates for intersection detection are the pixels lying on the thinned stripes, examined in a raster scanned manner. Detection is based on a set of conditions on the set of nonzero pixels lying in a square neighborhood centered about each candidate pixel. The detection conditions are a set of heuristics designed to test the hypothesis that the nonzero pixels in the square neighborhood are the thinned image of two intersecting stripes. Condition A: The set of nonzero border pixels in the square neighborhood centered about the candidate pixel consists of exactly four connected subsets called borderconnected components. If condition A is satisfied, then the remaining conditions are tested for each combination of four border pixels with one pixel taken from each border-connected component. Condition B: A set of constraints on the lengths of the shortest paths connecting the center candidate pixel with each of the four border pixels. Condition C: The set of nonzero pixels in the square neighborhood is exactly the union of two paths connecting pairs of border pixels, and with the candidate pixel required to lie on each of these paths. Condition D: A constraint on the curvature of each of these two paths. Condition E: A constraint on the angles of each of the two paths.


If each of the conditions A through E is satisfied for a candidate pixel and a quadruple of border pixel with one pixel taken from each of the border-connected components, then the geometric intersection of the two stripes is taken to be the set theoretic intersection of the two paths. The location of the intersection will later be estimated as the centroid of this connected component of pixels.

3.4 Grid Labeling The main purpose of this procedure is to determine the correct correspondence between labeled intersections on the slide and detected intersections in the camera image. We have found, using the marked grid, that reliable grid labeling can be performed without epipolar constraints and using only a small subset of the constraints used by Stockman and Hu [58]. This is an advantage in automatic calibration, where it is necessary to perform grid labeling without prior knowledge of camera or projector geometry. There are five steps in the direct construction of labels 1. Build a list of intersection adjacencies together with the directional sense of each adjacency. 2. Detect marker locations. 3. Construct the reduced graph. 4. Compute the longest paths. 5. Assign labels along each of the grid coordinate axis. For more information and details of the grid labeling procedure, see [32].


3.5 Triangulation Triangulation is the method by which the three dimensional location of points on the human body can be determined as the intersection of two lines: one line which passes through the camera lens center and the image of a grid intersection in the camera image plane, and a second line which passes through the projector lens center and the matching grid intersection on the slide. Because of the quantization of the digital image and the numerical inaccuracies in determining the camera calibration and projector calibration matrices, those two lines usually come close to intersecting but do not actually meet. The usual approach to solve this problem is to find the least squares intersection of the two lines, which can be defined as the point in space which minimizes the sum of the squares of the distances to the two lines [1] and is given by

where t1 , 0 ≤ i ≤ 11 are the elements of camera calibration matrix, li , 0 ≤ i ≤ 11 are the elements of projector calibration matrix, (u, v) are the image plane coordinates of a detected grid intersection and (p, q) is the grid label of the matching grid intersection on the slide. The unknowns are the object centered coordinates (x, y, z) of the point. This procedure gives a set of points (x,y, z) on the human body which are used to reconstruct the surface.

Chapter 4

Segmenting the Burn Area The problem at hand is how to identify which portion of the image is real burn wound area. In this chapter we will discuss several segmentation methods to solve the problem. This is the most difficult step to automate in the entire system since the boundary may be irregular and the contrast will not be constant in an image and may vary from patient to patient. In this chapter we shall present 3 methods: 1 Edge extraction followed by edge following. 2 Multi-level thresholding. 3 Manual contouring.

for segmenting the burn area. The first two of these are automatic procedures, and if they fail then the burn area can be segmented by choice 3, manual contouring.

4.1 Edge Extraction Followed by Edge Following 4.1.1 Edge Extraction

Because of the importance of edges and contours which delineate image regions and encode shape information, few problems in computer vision have been more intensively 21


studied than that of edge detection. Even so, there are probably only modest differences in performance between the most sophisticated modern techniques and the edge operator originally described fifteen to twenty year ago. Martelli [38] considered the edge-detection essentially as a tracking problem and used graphical theoretic techniques for its solution. Modestino and Fries [40] proposed a bidimensional recursive filtering scheme using statistical modeling of the image for edge detection. Basseville [6] had used a sequential algorithm for edge detection which uses a line-by-line detector of edge elements. The early edge operators generally embodied a specific edge model; they were designed to locate step edges, or measure local intensity gradients. These operators are generally of a fixed size and do not address the issues of edge width and resolution [24]. The "zero-crossing operator" introduced by Marr and his co-workers [37] has one important feature: it explicitly deals with scale of resolution by smoothing, as well as the image-intensity surface; it smooths out the intensity variation below the spatial frequency of the edge it finds. John Canny [12] proposed a many zero-crossing scale implementation. The Canny edge operator is in wide use including medical applications. For example, Eichel implemented the Canny operator to identify coronary artery edges from cineangiograms [18]. Most of the existing approaches are based on the design of a detector that identifies likely edge pixels. Nalwa and Binford [42] seek to identify edgels — short linear edge elements — rather than individual edge pixels. Haralick [26] models the intensity of surface patches analytically, then deduces the presence of edges from the coefficients of the model. A competing approach is regularization: For example, Torre and Poggio [61] argue that the numerical differentiation of images required for edge detection is an


ill-posed problem that must be regularized by a filtering operation before differentiation. The algorithm that we used poses the problem of edge extraction as a statistical classifier problem [34]. First, we assume the image is locally modeled as consisting of constant regions and two-valued regions as defined below. Definition 1 An n x n region is called a constant region if all the pixels inside the region have the same value, as in Figure 4.1 for a 3 x 3 region.

Definition 2 An n x n region is called a two-valued region if every pixel inside the region can have one of two possible values, either the higher pixel value Sh or lower pixel value Si, as in Figure 4.2.

This is not saying that the image consists of only two levels. All we are assuming is that over a small region of the image, the pixel values are either approximately constant or can have one of two possible values (a low value of low dispersion or a high value of low dispersion). The latter case belongs to an edge because most edges in the real


Figure 4.2: A 3 x 3 two-valued region

world are sharp edges where the intensity function is composed of a few step changes over a small number of pixels. An edge in the image is thus a collection of two-valued regions. The algorithm of edge extraction that we are using consists of three major steps. Step 1.

The program starts from moving a 3 x 3 window over the image in a raster scan fashion. At each instant, we labeled each pixel i inside the window as T2 i = 0, ..., 8. ,

We define Sh and Si as follow: Sh

= one below the maximum value of Ti = the eight order statistic of Ti


= one above the minimum value of Ti = the second order statistic of


and assume that the 3 x 3 region being tested is a two-valued region. Then the range R9

of the nine pixels in a two-valued region is


If the 3 x 3 region is close to the edge, R9 given by Sh - Slislkeytobarg; and if the 3 x 3 is over a constant region, R9 is likely to be small. So if R 9 > r1 and the center of the window < (S h S tl)he/cn2rapix,osblygt

an edge and we go to step 2. If the condition above fails, the central pixel is assumed to be part of a constant region. Then we move the window to the adjacent pixel in a raster scan fashion and start from step 1 all over again. In the above definition, Sh and S1 could be approximated by the maximum and the minimum order statistics. However, the maximum and the minimum order statistics are prone to wide margins of error. Furthermore if we use a sorting algorithm to order the set of data Ti from small value to a large value, it is no more difficult to get the eight and the second order statistic of the set of data At an edge, the width of the edge is two pixel thick; one belongs to the edge contour of the lower pixel value and the other belongs to the edge contour of the higher pixel value. The condition of "the pixel value of the center of the window