Tristage Hough transform for multiple ellipse
extraction
H.K. Muammar, MSc
M. Nixon, PhD, MlEE
Indexing terms: Computer graphics, Design
Abstract: The importance of rapid and accurate
extraction of ellipses in images for model-based
computer vision systems has long been recognised.
The Hough transform technique has established
itself as a robust method for shape extraction,
however, its application to ellipses has been
restricted by excessive computational and storage
requirements. Direct extension of the Hough tech-
nique to ellipses is particularly demanding since a
five-dimensional accumulator array is required.
This paper presents a novel tristage technique for
ellipse extraction based on decomposing the
problem into sequentially executed stages. Candi-
date ellipse centres are determined using an
improved centre-finding procedure and novel
Hough-based procedures extract the remaining
parameters in two further stages. Although multi-
stage parameter extraction is not new, many of the
problems that exist in previous schemes are
resolved. In the new technique, the dimensionality
of the accumulator arrays used does not exceed
two, while their ranges are predefined. Memory
savings are therefore significant. Concentric
ellipses of the same orientation are shown to be
extracted with little extra computational demand.
Two extensions of the tristage technique to multi-
ple ellipse extraction are presented and compared.
When applied to real images, the new technique
extracted multiple, concentric ellipses reliably and
with reduced complexity.
1 Introduction
I. 1 Ellipse detection
A fundamental requirement in many computer vision
systems is the ability to extract parametrically defined
shapes from images. Many manufactured objects are cir-
cular, and appear as ellipses when viewed from an
oblique angle. Two-dimensional contour information can
be used in three-dimensional shape analysis, to improve
the accuracy and robustness of object-shape matching
[l]. In ACRONYM [2], ellipse contour data is used to
aid the process of object recognition. The rapid and accu-
rate extraction of ellipses from images can, therefore, be
highly important for any model-based vision system. Fast
extraction of ellipse contours is possible using methods
Paper 7412E (C2), first received 22nd September 1989 and in revised
form 20th March 1990
The authors are with the Department of Electronics and Computer Sci-
ence, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, SO9 5NH,
United Kingdom
IEE PROCEEDINGS-E, Vol. 138, N O . 1, J A N U A R Y 1991
such as Freeman chain coding and polygonal approx-
imation (see Reference 3); however, the reliability of these
techniques is likely to suffer if the edge data is noisy or if
the image feature space is cluttered.
The Hough transform (HT) was introduced in 1962 as
a technique for detecting lines in digitised images. Since
then, it has been improved and extended to detect other
parametrically defined shapes and arbitrary shapes [4].
Its popularity has increased steadily owing mainly to its
robustness and ability to cope with image noise. In its
standard form, the H T has been shown to be equivalent
to template matching [SI, and as such, maximises the
signal-to-noise ratio of shape detection when white noise
is present. The process of gathering evidence in param-
eter space independently from edge data in the image
space, indicates that the H T is capable of recognising
objects even when they are partially hidden or data seg-
ments are missing.
A number of disadvantages are associated with the
standard implementation of the Hough transform for
ellipses. An ellipse can be conveniently parameterised by
its centre co-ordinates, major and minor radii and orien-
tation. An extension of the standard parametric H T to
ellipses imposes the requirement of a five-dimensional
parameter space. If accurate extraction of ellipses is to be
carried out, a uniformly fine quantisation of this param-
eter space is necessary. This, however, can lead to unac-
ceptable demands in terms of computer storage required
and the computation needed to perform the H T
mapping. The task of extracting ellipses from images can
be made practical by making use of the gradient direction
of contour points and by breaking down the problem
into one that can be solved in two, or more, sequentially
executed stages. A number of ellipse recognition schemes
that have followed this approach have emerged.
I .2 Previous approaches
Tsuji and Matsumoto [6] have presented a scheme for
ellipse recognition whereby the centres of candidate
ellipses are extracted during the initial pass. The tech-
nique by which ellipse centres are found is based on a
simple geometric property of ellipses. If a pair of points
with equal tangents lie on the contour of the same ellipse,
then their midpoint is the centre of the ellipse. In the first
stage of the centre-finding procedure, pairs of image
points with equal, or near equal, tangents are extracted.
A two-dimensional histogram of the midpoints of each
extracted pair of points is then constructed. Peaks in this
histogram define centres of candidate ellipses in the
image. The set of points which contributed to the
extracted centre are then identified and a least mean
squares technique is applied to these points to obtain
estimates of all five parameters. The least squares method
21
can, however, suffer if outliers or irrelevant data is
present in the image. Such a situation is likely to arise if
concentric ellipses exist in the image. To identify the exis-
tence of concentric ellipses a geometric test is applied.
The least squares technique is then applied separately to
each ellipse in the concentric set, if it exists. The centre-
finding technique they use has several limitations. If,
owing to occlusion, insufficient pairs of points with equal
tangents remain on the ellipse contour, the technique is
liable to fail. Secondly, straight lines in the image must be
located and removed before ellipses are searched for, as
these generate false ridges during the centre-finding
process.
Tsukune and Goto [7] apply the same centre-finding
technique, but recover the remaining parameters using an
implementation based on the polynomial representation
of the ellipse. If a translation is applied to image points
such that their origin lies on the estimated ellipse centre,
the polynomial equation of an ellipse can be expressed as
follows:
x2 + By2 + 2Dxy + C = 0 B - D2 > 0 (1)
Extracting B, C and D using a direct Hough transform-
ation based on this parameterisation would require a
three-dimensional accumulator array. Tsukune and Goto
decompose this problem into two further steps by using
an alternative parameterisation obtained by differentiat-
ing eqn. 1 with respect to x . This gives
+ + +
x Byy' D(xY' y ) = 0 (2)
Using edge gradient direction y', a two-dimensional HT
is applied to determine B and D. Once B and D have
been estimated, a one-dimensional histogram can be used
to estimate the final parameter C using eqn. 1. A
number of disadvantages exist with this scheme. The
range of parameters used in the polynomial representa-
tion of an ellipse is generally large and difficult to define.
This can mean that large amounts of computer storage
are required, even for the two-dimensional accumulator
array. Savings in computer storage may therefore not be
significant. Secondly, edge gradient direction information
is used extensively throughout the scheme. Errors as a
result of inaccurate edge direction estimation are likely to
propagate to the second stage of the ellipse recognition
procedure. This can result in inaccurate estimation of
orientation and radii of the ellipse.
Nagata, Tamura and Ishibashi [SI describe a recursive
least mean squares based scheme for detecting ellipses.
Before applying the least squares technique, the image is
segmented using a procedure that is based on statistically
determining an optimum set of thresholds from a multi-
mode histogram of the image. This is followed by the
application of a noise reduction method to the binary
image. Region boundaries are finally obtained by apply-
ing a contour tracking algorithm to each region. The
recursive least squares method is applied to the extracted
contours to recover all five parameters. As with most
least squares procedures, the presence of irrelevant points
can be detrimental to the accuracy of the technique.
Careful consideration must be given to the choice of an
appropriate weighting scheme which ensures that outlier
points d o not significantly affect the overall calculation of
parameters.
A new centre-finding technique has recently been pre-
sented by Yuen, Illingworth and Kittler [9] as part of a
scheme for ellipse detection. Their improved centre-
finding technique can tolerate higher levels of partial
occlusion of the ellipse. The adaptive Hough transform
28
(AHT) [lo] is used to extract the remaining three param-
eters from a parameterisation based on the polynomial
representation of the ellipse (eqn. 1). The AHT implemen-
tation uses a small (9 x 9 x 9) accumulator array and
iteratively focusses in on parameter regions of highest
accumulator density. It does this by dynamically and
independently increasing the resolution of each param-
eter in the array, thereby reducing its coverage. It over-
comes the main problem associated with the polynomial
parameterisation of the ellipse, namely that of large
storage requirements owing to large parameter ranges.
However, problems with the AHT include its complex
implementation. Thin, ridge-like peaks in parameter
space can result in errors during the redimensioning stage
of the parameter space and this can result in incorrect
peak identification.
1.3 The tristage approach
In this paper, a novel scheme for ellipse recognition is
presented whereby ellipse parameters are extracted in
three sequentially executed stages. During the first pass,
candidate ellipse centres are found using the centre-
finding method adopted by Yuen et al. [9]. The remain-
ing parameters are found in two further stages using
Hough-based parameterisations that overcome the prob-
lems associated with previous schemes. Once a candidate
ellipse centre has been determined, a set of points lying
on the axes of symmetry of the ellipse is generated. These
points are then mapped to a one-dimensional orientation
histogram from which ellipse orientation is determined.
Ellipse contour points are then passed to a third stage
where the estimated centre and orientation are used to
determine the major and minor ellipse radii. Pairs of
contour points are rotated through an angle equal to the
measured orientation about the estimated ellipse centre.
Ellipse radii are subsequently found by applying a novel
two-dimensional HT to the rotated points. A block
diagram of the tristage technique is shown in Fig. 1.
Errors in edge direction estimates are less likely to be
+
introduced during the estimation of orientation and
acquire image
edge detecton and
gradient direction
estimation
_ _ _
I
I
centre finding I
I
I
I feature pant labelling
I I
I
I
I
r
v
-find Orientation
I
use symmetry
of ellipse
I
I
I
rotate points an3
apply HT
I
Fig. 1 Tristage Hough transform for ellipse recognition
I E E PROCEEDINGS-E, Vol. 138, N o . I , J A N U A R Y 1991
 ellipse radii, since edge positional information is used
mainly in the later stages. The problem of undefined
parameter ranges encountered in the polynomial param-
eterisation of an ellipse is resolved. Parameter limits in
the tristage technique bear a one-to-one relationship with
D the possible parameter values the unknown ellipse may
take. Consequently, significant savings in computer
storage are achieved. The extraction of concentric ellipses
with equal orientation can be carried out efficiently since
these can be accurately resolved by the algorithm in the
final stage. Previous methods based on the polynomial
parameterisation of an ellipse [7,9] are not directly
suited to the extraction of concentric ellipses. Least
squares based techniques [6, 81 require additional tests to
determine the existence of concentric ellipses.
2 Details of the tristage technique
2.1 Centre estimation
The first stage in most Hough-based ellipse detection
schemes is that of centre-finding. It is perhaps the most
important, since the accuracy with which the remaining
three parameters can be determined frequently depends
on the ellipse centre measurements. Successful extraction
of the ellipse boundary is made possible if good centre-
finding techniques are used. One centre-finding method
(used in References 6 and 7) evaluated the midpoints of
pairs of contour points with approximately equal
tangents. If the contour points were both located on the
boundary of an ellipse then their midpoint defined the
ellipse centre. A two-dimensional histogram was used to
accumulate the midpoint locations. Peaks in the histo-
gram defined the locations of possible ellipse centres.
However, partial occlusion of the ellipse, often resulted in
a significant reduction in the number of points symmetri-
cal about the ellipse centre. In these situations, the tech-
nique was liable to fail.
Because of its ability to handle partial occlusion, we
have used the ellipse centre-finding method of Yuen et al.
[9]. This procedure is based on a simple geometric pro-
perty of ellipses. Consider the two points, p , ( ~ ,y,), and
P 2 ( x 2 ,y2), lying on the boundary of an ellipse as shown
in Fig. 2. Given that P , and P , have intersecting
Fig. 2 Ellipse showing intersecting tangent point T , and midpoint M
tangents, then the line through the intersection point
T ( t , , t,), and the midpoint M ( m x , my), of P , and P 2 will
pass through the centre of that ellipse. The equation of
line T M can be expressed as :
y=cx+d
where x and y are the co-ordinates of points on the line.
The gradient of the line c , and the offset d are given by:
t, - my
C = d = m y - cm,
tx - mx
IEE PROCEEDINGS-E, Vol. 138, N O . 1, J A N U A R Y 1991
The co-ordinates of T are given as:
t, =
Y , - Yz - SlXl + 92x2
92 - 91
t, =
Yl92 - Y291 + 9 2 9 1 ( x 2 - x1)
- 91
g2
and for the point M :
mx = ~
+x2 Yl
=~ + Y2
2 2
where g1 and g2 are the slopes of the tangents of P , and
P , , respectively.
Lines constructed from all pairs of points lying on the
same ellipse will intersect at one point, O ( x , , yo), the
centre of the ellipse. In a practical implementation of this
scheme, P , and P , cast their votes in a two-dimensional
accumulator array called the centre array. Locations in
this array which intersect the line T M are incremented.
Local peaks in the array give evidence for possible
ellipses and their centres in the image. Votes cast by pairs
of points resulting from random noise or other shapes in
the image will, in most cases, give rise to background
accumulation in the centre array. In certain situations
however, the accumulation of votes caused by pairing
points on different ellipses or shapes can result in false
peaks in the accumulator array. These peaks may disrupt
the interpretation of the parameter space by masking out
significant peaks relating to the centres of smaller or par-
tially occluded ellipses.
If the maximum expected size of ellipse is taken into
account, then the likelihood of false peaks arising can be
reduced by setting upper limits on the spacing of pairs of
points which are included in the voting process. Pairs of
points whose separation exceeds this limit are assumed
unlikely to lie on the contour of the same ellipse. Simi-
larly, we can avoid pairing points which are too close to
each other, as errors in edge gradient direction estimation
are likely to result in an invalid set of votes being gener-
ated.
Hence, we need only include a pair of image points,
P , ( x , , y,) and P 2 ( x , , y 2 ) , in the voting process if they
satisfy the following criteria:
where d,,, and dminare some preset values. This criterion
was applied by Yuen et al. [9] in their implementation of
the ellipse centre-finding scheme. Careful choice of d,,,
and dminprovided a degree of control over the particular
size of ellipse that was extracted. In general, d,,, was set
to a value equal to twice the expected maximum of the
major radius.
The process of pairing up a set of points results in a
line along T M that passes at some point through the
centre of the ellipse. For practical purposes, lines of
length L, starting from M , in the direction of the expected
ellipse centre were generated. In order that sufficient
votes were generated to allow accurate estimates of
ellipse centres, the length L was set in the region of the
expected maximum of the major ellipse radius.
Since the Hough transform is an incremental evidence
gathering procedure, shape extraction is possible even
if part of the data is only processed. Point hopping
was introduced to speed extraction, whereby qualifying
feature points were paired with every nth point in the
feature list rather than with every point.
29
2.2 Determining ellipse orientation
Once an estimate of the location of an ellipse centre has
been made, the process of determining ellipse orientation
can be carried out. If a shape is known to have an axis of
symmetry with slope 0,, then the angular slopes (in
radians) of its k axes of symmetry are given by :
Oi = 8, + (i - l)n/k i = 1, 2, . . . , k
An ellipse possesses two axes of symmetry, 0, and
whose angular slopes are given by:
e, = 0,
and
6 2 = eo + 4 2
The procedure for estimating ellipse orientation involves
identifying the set of midpoints M , and tangent intersec-
tions T , which lie on either axis of symmetry of the
ellipse. An important assumption is that the intersection
point of the axes of symmetry of the ellipse lies on the
estimated ellipse centre. If the distances O P , and O P , ,
from any given pair of points, P , P , , respectively, to the
el!ipse centre are equal, then the points M and T are
assumed to lie on either axis of symmetry of the ellipse.
Points M and T which lie on the axes of symmetry are
then rotated by a factor of n/2 about the estimated ellipse
centre, so that they lie in the first quadrant of a co-
ordinate frame whose origin lies on that centre.
The angles subtended by O M and OT increment a
one-dimensional orientation histogram. The mode in the
histogram defines the angular slope of either the major or
the minor axis (0, or 0,) of the ellipse. Which axis the
angular slope relates to is unimportant at this stage and
can be resolved after the major and minor radii have
been determined. The procedure for determining ellipse
orientation is outlined in Fig. 3. A weighting scheme
similar to that used by Van Veen and Groen [111 was
incorporated into the voting process. The coefficients of a
Gaussian function whose mean coincided with the angle
subtended by O M and OT were added to the histogram
locations during the voting process. The Gaussian func-
tion was chosen to compensate for errors in ellipse orien-
tation owing to inaccurate edge tangent direction data.
The coefficients of the function were evaluated over nine
elements with a standard deviation (namely width) equal
to 1.0. This configuration was observed to improve the
robustness of orientation estimates with a negligible
increase in computational demand.
DOi=l,M !Pointpi
D O j = i + 1, M !Point Pj
dl = O P i
d2 = OPj
IF ( ( d l . E O d 2 ) . A N D (Pi . N E . P i ) ) T H E N
{Work out M and r )
{Rotate M and T about 0 by a factor of pi/2 so that they lie in
the first quadrant of a co-ordinate frame centered at 0)
thetal =arctan ( ( m y - y o ) / ( m x - , Y O ) )
theta2 = arctan ( ( t y - yo)/(tw - , Y O ) )
acc (thetal ) = acc (thetal ) + 1
acc (theta2) = acc (theta2) + 1
ENDlF
ENDDO
ENDDO
{The location with maximum votes in array 'acc' is obtained}
Fig. 3 Outline of procedure for determining the axes of symmetry of
ellipse and orientation
30
2.3 Estimating the major and minor ellipse radii
Once a maximum, O,,,, has been extracted from the
orientation histogram, the estimation of ellipse radii can
proceed. Pairs of points, P,P,, in a third pass through
the image are rotated to P;(x;,y;) and P;(x;,y;),
through an angle eoptabout the estimated ellipse centre,
according to the transformation [123 :
e,, x' = ( x - x o )cos O,,, - ( y - y o ) sin Oopt + xo
Y' = ( x - xo) sin 0,,, + (Y - Y o ) cos Oopt + Y o
This results in a subset of transformed points situated on
the boundary of an unrotated ellipse. For a pair of points
P',(x;, y ; ) and P 2 ( x ; ,y;) on the contour of an unrotated
ellipse, with centre O ( x o ,yo),we have
(3)
(4- X O ) , (Y; - Yo),
(4)
+ 7 = l
These can be combined by eliminating b to give
Solving for a,
We can also combine the two equations so as to elimi-
nate a and solve for b to give
For a pair of points attributed to lie on the ellipse, eqns.
5 and 6 can be used to calculate values for the major and
minor radii, a and b.
Points P', and P ; vote for major and minor radii in a
quantised 2-dimensional radius accumulator array. The
location of a peak in this array defines the a and b radii
of the detected ellipse. Ellipse orientation is generally
defined as the angle subtended by the major axis with the
horizontal co-ordinate of the image frame. Symmetry of
the ellipse about n/2 means that the ambiguity arising in
the measurement of orientation can be resolved by
inspection of the measured a and b radii. If b is greater
than a, the ellipse orientation becomes
8, = o,,, + n/2
and a and b are exchanged. Otherwise, the measured
parameters remain valid. In a situation where contours of
concentric ellipses with equal orientation exist in the
feature map, these will map to separate peaks in the
radius array.
2.4 Feature point labelling and accumulator array
simplification
Applying the orientation and radius finding procedures
(stages 2 and 3) directly to a feature map in which candi-
date ellipse centres have been extracted is likely to be
computationally expensive. Also, it may yield inaccurate
results if the feature space is complex and multiple
ellipses exist. To reduce the complexity of the image
feature space, it was necessary to identify the points from
which the significant accumulator counts originated.
That is, a subset of points lying on the contour of the
IEE P R O C E E D I N G S - E , Vol. 138, N o . I , J A N U A R Y l Y Y 1
ellipse whose c e n t r e has bcen found was required. Appli-
cation of stages 2 and 3 to the subset of contour points
representing the ellipse boundary meant that procedures
implemented for extracting the remaining three param-
eters were more robust and less computationally inten-
sive. Extraction of the relevant boundary points was
achieved using a method derived from a backmapping
technique introduced by Gerig and Klein [13]. The back-
mapping technique is based on the assumption that a
given boundary point should be a member of only one
curve in image space. Membership to that curve is
defined by an accompanying accumulator cell with the
highest count, and hence, an optimum parameter set aopr.
To identify the optimum parameter set for a given
boundary point, the Hough procedure is repeated a
second time. But instead of incrementing cells intersected
by each voting surface, the location of the cell with the
highest count a,,,, is found. The boundary point is then
labelled with this location. The identification of boundary
points that contributed to a peak (optimum parameter
set) in the accumulator array becomes straightforward.
Incorporating the Gerig and Klein backmapping pro-
cedure can also result in a simplification of the accumula-
tor array. During the backmapping procedure, if all cells
except for aoprthat intersect the voting surface are can-
celled, then the distribution of votes in the accumulator
array is concentrated at peak locations (optimum param-
eter sets). Sidelobes associated with local peaks generated
during the voting process can obscure peaks relating to
nearby or smaller ellipses. Accumulator simplification
will suppress these sidelobes thus simplifying the process
of multiple ellipse detection.
The basic strategy for incorporating the Gerig and
Klein procedure into the ellipse centre-finding routine is
shown in Fig. 4. A modified version of the centre-finding
procedure is applied to the image contour points, after
c for all
- i'
for all apply the same point
pairing criteria as in
7
generate voting function
f@,,,a)=O
centre finding
I
identify the cell w i t h maximum
votes along f(p,,, a ) = 0,
accumulate a 1 -dimensional
- histogram w i t h aoDt,,
L,(aop,,,I = L , b O D t,,I + 1
1
identify the cell in L, w i t h
maximum votes
aODr I
1 method
Fig. 4 Flow diayram for Geriy and Klein hackmappiny procedure
applied to ellipse centre-finding
IEE PROCEEDINGS-E. Vol. 138. N o I , J A N U A R Y 1991
candidate ellipse centres have been accumulated. Each
contour point Pi is paired with all points Pi,provided
that Pi and P j do not have equal tangent gradients. The
process of backmapping identifies the accumulator loca-
tion aopr,i . Centre array simplification can be carried out
by accumulating votes at locations in a second
accumulator array of similar dimensions to the centre
array. The process of feature point labelling using the
Gerig and Klein procedure reduces the centre-finding
transform to a many-to-one mapping. The identification
and extraction of a subset of points labelled as having
contributed most to the candidate ellipse centre during
the centre-finding process is now possible.
Yuen et al. [9] have included the backmapping tech-
nique of Gerig and Klein [131 in their scheme for ellipse
recognition. The computational cost of the backmapping
technique, in their implementation is the same as the
centre-finding. The process of centre-finding and back-
mapping can be computationally intensive, particularly if
a large number of points exist in the image. Positional
information relating to local peaks in the centre array
was used, in our scheme, to carry out feature point label-
ling and centre array simplification in the initial centre-
finding pass. This resulted in an additional saving in
computation.
3 Extending the technique t o detect multiple
ellipses
Two extensions of the tristage Hough transform to detect
instances of multiple ellipses are outlined.
3.1 Ellipse contour removal (ECR)
In the first extension, ellipses extracted using the tristage
technique are removed from the binary contour map.
This is carried out by setting edge pixels which lie on the
contour of a simulated ellipse with the extracted param-
eters to zero. The centre-finding procedure is reapplied
and further peaks searched for until the extracted peak is
below a predetermined threshold. At this point, no
further ellipses are assumed to be present in the image
and the search ends. Peak threshold selection is arbitrary
but is largely governed by the expected ellipse size and
the extent to which it may be obscured.
3.2 Accumulator peak removal (APR)
Rather than delete the detected ellipse from the binary
edge map, we can instead delete the associated peak it1
the accumulator array. This forms the basis of the second
extension. Centre-finding and feature point labelling are
applied only once to points in the binary edge map.
Peaks associated with the extracted ellipse are removed
by setting accumulator cells in a 5 x 5 neighbourhood
centred at the extracted peak location to zero. Remaining
peaks are subsequently searched for until the extracted
peak is below a predetermined threshold, at which point
the search ends. This extension to multiple ellipse detec-
tion is more likely to be successful if applied to the sim-
plified centre array resulting from the Gerig and Klein
procedure [lo]. This is because, in the simplified centre
array, sidelobes which would otherwise obscure further
peaks resulting from smaller or partially obscured ellipses
are suppressed.
3.3 Analytic comparison of the complexity of each
A comparison of the approximate complexity for each
method can be made by considering the simple case of an
image containing k ellipses each composed of n points.
31
Only the computation required during centre-finding will than or equal to 50 pixels could therefore be accommo-
be considered. The number of possible point pairs on one dated.
ellipse is given as Image PARTS, (Fig. 5), is a typical industrial scene
n! and consists of two metal rings, a metal bracket and 9
np bolt, bar;klit by il JiTcueeiJ 1iCjht BOUTSS. A G-annT
2 - - n(n - 1)
(n - 2)! operator [14] was applied to the image and the resulting
feature map, to which the ellipse finding procedures were
In order that accurate feature point labelling can occur
applied, is shown in Fig. 6. Two sets of concentric ellipses
during centre-finding, permutations of points on the
were formed by the metal rings, the rightmost set labelled
ellipse must be considered. Assuming that no point
as concentric set A, the leftmost as concentric set B. The
pairing occurs between different ellipses, then the number
circular cutting in the metal bracket viewed from an
of votes, V,,, , cast by all k ellipses is
angle has resulted in a single ellipse contour. A total of
k
1247 points exist in the feature map of image PARTS. To
Yo* = cv
i= 1
ensure that accurate centre-finding and feature point
labelling would result, d,,, and dminwere set at 60 and 5
where V is the number of votes cast by each ellipse and is pixels, respectively, and L was set at 40 pixels. These are
equal to Ln(n - 1). L is defined as the length, in pixels, of rough figures and were obtained as described earlier.
the voting line cast by each pair of points. The total Pairing each feature point with every 15th in the feature
number of votes, VEcR,cast by all k ellipses using ellipse
contour removal (ECR) is
k-1 k-i

Using the extension based on accumulator peak removal

(APR), and assuming that the cost incurred in peak delet-
ing is negligible in comparison, then the total votes cast is
1

v,,, = 2v
i= 1

The ratio of votes cast by the two extensions can be

expressed as

i= 1

which simplifies to

It appears, therefore, that a saving in the number of votes Fig. 5 Test image P A R T S
cast using the APR extension is only obtained when there
are two or more ellipses in the image. Although this may
be true for the simulation described above, in practice,
real images are often cluttered with irrelevant shapes
resulting in extensive pairing between points other than
those lying on the ellipse contours. It is faster, in practical
situations to delete the peaks associated with the
extracted ellipse than to reaccumulate the centre space.

4 Experimental results
n
In this Section the proposed ellipse contour removal
(ECR) and the accumulator peak removal (APR) exten-
sions of the tristage technique to multiple ellipse detec-
tion were compared experimentally. The algorithms,
coded in VAX FORTRAN 77 and run on a MicroVax 11,
were applied to real images quantised to 256 x 256
pixels, containing multiple ellipses. Storage requirements
for the tristage method were as follows. Ellipse centres
were extracted to integer resolution from a 256 x 256 cell
accumulator array. Orientation and major and minor
radius estimates were obtained to integer resolution from
a 91 element orientation-histogram and a 51 x 51
element radius-accumulator array. Ellipses with arbitrary
orientation and whose major and minor radii were less Fig. 6 Feature map

32 IEE P R O C E E D I N G S - E , Vol. 138, N O . I , J A N U A R Y 1991

map coIisiderably reduced thc computation required by
the centre-finding procedure without noticeably impair-
ing its robustness.
The subsels of kature points identified with the ellipst-
centres are shown in Figs. 7-9. Note that the point label-
ling procedure has failed to identify all the points on each
ellipse contour. In addition, points not on the ellipse
contour have also been identified. Outliers present in the
subset of points identified by the feature point labelling
procedure can present problems to l e a t squares based
methods. These inaccuracies in point labelling have not
affected the performance of stages 2 and 3 of the ellipse
finding procedure.
The proposed ellipse-finding procedure is particularly
suitable for the extraction of concentric ellipses with
equal orientation but differing radii. A three-dimensional
representation of the radius accumulator array for the
concentric ellipse set B is shown in Fig. 10. The major
.io
.+
.--
Fig. 7 Subset of points labelled with centre of concenrric' ellip.se set A
Fig. 8 Subset o/ points lubelled w i t h centre of concentric' ellipse s e t B
I E E PROCEEDINGS-E. Vol. 138. N O . 1. J 4 . V C 4 R Y 1991
and minor radii of each ellipse in the concentric set were
identified simply by extracting peaks in the array which
exceeded a preset threshold. Identification of ellipse radii
i n a cvncentric set is likely to be more complex in
methods which are based on the polynomial representa-
tion of the ellipse [7,9]. The existence of concentric
ellipses would have to be confirmed and additional pro-
cessing required before the least squares technique is
applied to the subset of points.
A benchmark for comparing the accuracy of ellipse
parameters extracted using the ECR and APR extensions
was provided by a partial implementation of the stan-
dard Hough transform for ellipses. This was made practi-
cal by limiting the search space using a priori knowledge
of the approximate ellipse parameters. The parameters
extracted by all three methods are tabulated in Fig. 12.
Both the APR and ECR extensions of the ellipse-fintling
procedure successfully extracted all the ellipses in
PARTS. It can be observed that co-ordinate values
delivered by both versions of the three stage technique
.- .-...-
Fig. 9 Subset of points labelled with centre ofsingle ellipse conrojdr
Fig. 10 Three-dimensional representation of radius uccumulutor urray
for conc.entric ellipse set B
33
differ at most by one pixel value from the values obtained
by the standard HT. In Fig. 11, the ellipses extracted by
the APR extension are shown to fit the edge map repre-
sentation well. Spurious peaks were detected by each
method, however they were rejected since the number of
feature points labelled with the peak locations was low.
Fig. 11 Evtracted ellipses using A P R eztumioii oi-erluyed orrr c d y r
map
The processor time required by the ECR and APR
extensions of the tristage technique to extract each ellipse
set are shown in the table of Fig. 12. Because the centre-
finding stage is applied only once by the APR extension,
processor times required to extract the parameters of the
concentric set B and ellipse 5 were less than that con-
sumed by the ECR extension. Note that the CPU time
shown for the APR extension for the extraction of con-
centric set A includes the time required to apply the
centre-finding transform. It is difficult to give clear guide-
lines as to the processor time consumed by each stage of
the tristage technique since this depends on the nature of
finding procedure particularly when the image feature set
is cluttered with irrelevant data. In this case the nurriber
of feature points identified with a candidate ellipse ce.itre
is likely to be much less than the total number of points
in the image feature set. Thus. processor time consumed
by the orientation and radius-finding stages is low and is
roughly equally divided between each stage. On the 01 her
hand, when concentric ellipses exist in the feature set (as
in image PARTS), the level of point pairing carried out
during stages 2 and 3 is likely to increase and processor
time is more equally divided between all three stage:;. A
speed-up factor of 2201149 = 1.48 was obtained using the
APR extension over ECR. The relative saving obtained is
modest since the feature set was dominated by concentric
ellipses.
The counting of plaque on Petri dishes is a highly
labour intensive task in biological and medical work.
Ellipses were fitted to plaque contours in digitised images
of Petri dishes in an attempt to carry out a plaque coint.
Overlapping or connected plaque were characterised by
highly asymmetric ellipses. With this assumption in mind,
if the ratio of major to minor radii was R , then R plaque
were assumed to exist within the detected ellipse. A IT ag-
nified sector of the Petri dish, containing 84 plaque
(excluding plaque touching the image boundary) was
used as a test image, (Fig. 13). Inter-ellipse pairing during
centre-finding was reduced by setting d,,, to 8 pixels.
and d,,, and L were set to 1 and 6. respectively. The
ECR extension of the ellipse-finding procedure required
1740 seconds of CPU time to extract 81 plaque. Only 137
seconds o f CPU time were required using the APR exien-
sion to extract 82 plaque. These are shown overlayed on
the original test image in Fig. 14. A speed increasc of
nearly 13 times by the APR extension over the ECR
extension highlights the computational savings that can
be obtained in some practical situations using this
method of multiple shape extraction. However, shape
extraction using accumulator peak removal may not be
as robust. Reaccumulation of the parameter space after
ellipse contour removal may impose an additional com-
putational load during centre-finding, but is likely to
result in more accurate feature point labelling.
L

the feature space and on the original image. Processor

time consumed is generally dominated by the centre-

~~ ~ ~~

Ellipse Method Centre Orientation Major Minor Points CPU

yo Yo e radws radius (secs)
1 SHT 142 195 26 41 15
ECR 143 196 26 41 15
APR 143 196 26 41 15
2 SHT 142 195 27 33 11 ~

ECR 143 196 26 32 11 338 102

APR 143 196 26 32 11 338 101
3 SHT 141 51 153 33 23
ECR 142 51 154 34 23
APR 142 51 154 34 23
4 SHT 142 51 153 38 26 - ~

ECR 142 51 154 38 27 362 85

APR 142 51 154 38 27 327 38
5 SHT 145 152 145 22 15 - -
ECR 145 152 146 22 15 122 23
APR 145 152 145 22 15 163 10

Fig. 12 Standard H T ( S H T ) , ellipse conrour remoral ( t C R ) und

accumulator peak remocal ( A P R )algorithms upplird to imuge P.4R T S
Total CPU time using ECR extension: 220 seconds (includes 10 seconds reaccumu-
lating the centre array after ellipse 5 was extracted) Total CPU times using APR
extension: 149 seconds. Ellipses 1 and 2 constitute concentric set A whereas
ellipses 3 and 4 constitute concentric set B. Fig. 13 Digitised segmerit o f P e r r i dish

Fig. 14 Extracted plaque contours using E C R el-tension
5 Conclusions
A tristage Hough transform for ellipse extraction has
been presented. Candidate ellipse centres were found
using an improved centre-finding technique and the
remaining parameters were extracted in two sequentially
executed stages using one- and two-dimensional Hough
parameterisations. A qualitative comparison has shown
that the new technique appears to solve many of the
problems associated with previous ellipse-finding
schemes. Parameterisations based on the polynomial rep-
resentation of an ellipse can require large accumulator
arrays whose ranges are difficult to define. Computa-
tional savings in the tristage technique are significant
since the dimensionality of the accumulator arrays used
in the tristage technique is restricted to two and the
range of parameter values is predefined. Schemes that
estimate ellipse orientation and radii using least squares
procedures can suffer from the presence of outliers. These,
it was shown, do not seriously affect the robustness of the
new technique.
Although the likelihood of a systematic propagation of
errors increases with the number of stages required,
multistage parameter estimation can result in a greater
degree of control and flexibility in shape extraction. The
tristage technique was shown to be particularly suited to
extract concentric ellipses.
Two extensions of the technique to multiple ellipse
extraction have been presented. I t was shown that delet-
ing peaks representing ellipse centres in the accumulator
array was computationally less demanding than dele1ing
the contour of the ellipse in feature space. However, the
latter extension is likely to be more robust. A practical
application of the technique to count plaque sites on a
Petri dish demonstrated that removing peaks in the accu-
mulator array achieved a speed-up factor of nearly 13
times over ellipse contour removal. The technique was
also demonstrated to successfully extract ellipses assxi-
ated with an arrangement of mechanical parts.
Problems that remain are the excessive computational
effort incurred during centre-finding owing to the irrele-
vant point-pairing that occurs between different ellipses
and other shapes. This is experienced, to a degree, in later
stages when concentric ellipses exist in the feature space.
This problem may, to an extent, be resolved if some form
of image segmentation is applied in conjunction with
edge detection. Future work will continue to investigate
these possibilies.
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35