EDCircles: A real-time circle detector with a false detection control

Abstract

We propose a real-time, parameter-free circle detection algorithm that has high detection rates, produces accurate results and controls the number of false circle detections. The algorithm makes use of the contiguous (connected) set of edge segments produced by our parameter-free edge segment detector, the Edge Drawing Parameter Free (EDPF) algorithm; hence the name EDCircles. The proposed algorithm first computes the edge segments in a given image using EDPF, which are then converted into line segments. The detected line segments are converted into circular arcs, which are joined together using two heuristic algorithms to detect candidate circles and near-circular ellipses. The candidates are finally validated by an a contrario validation step due to the Helmholtz principle, which eliminates false detections leaving only valid circles and near-circular ellipses. We show through experimentation that EDCircles works real-time (10–20ms for 640×480 images), has high detection rates, produces accurate results, and is very suitable for the next generation real-time vision applications including automatic inspection of manufactured products, eye pupil detection, circular traffic sign detection, etc.