CVVEFM: Cubical voxels and virtual electric field model for edge detection in color images

Most conventional derivative-based color edge detectors have shortcomings such as high computational cost, difficulty in implementation and missing edges. In this paper, we propose a new, simple and effective cubical voxels and virtual electric field model (CVVEFM) for edge detection in color images. The main idea is to model a color image as the network of elementary cubical points (voxels) of virtual electric charges. These charges are uniformly distributed on a cube, in electrostatic balance. In this edge detector, three designed operators which provide approximate gradients of each plane color component are determined. The method is based on the combinations of simple cubical voxels (CV) and virtual electric field (VEF) models. The CV model describes the color pixels as cubical voxels. The VEF model describes the voxels as punctual electric charges by mathematical expressions. Both are used simultaneously to describe the color images including more edges than usually used. Fast, easy to implement and satisfactory edge detection due to its characteristics is accomplished with the CVVEFM. Some color images illustrate the results. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.