A Robust Multi-Circle Detector Based on Horizontal and Vertical Search Analysis Fitting with Tangent Direction

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an efficient Multi-Circle detector which follows the fixed search order. The method makes use of horizontal and vertical search to realize circle detection, which is named as HVCD. First, this method computes edge areas in a given image. The edge areas could be divided into some regions by means of region growing. Each of regions could be efficiently searched to achieve not only one-pixel wide edges but edge segments as well. Next, the candidate circles can be extracted from every edge segment. Finally, the circle candidates could be validated with the help of Helmholtz principle. Experimental results demonstrate that HVCD could effectively detect circles on synthetic and natural images on the one hand; on the other hand, HVCD here could solve the weakness in the process of circle Hough transform implementation and EDcircles implementation.