MOMENT-PRESERVING CORNER DETECTION

A new corner detection method based on the principle of preserving gray and mass moments is proposed. For each circular region in a digital image, bilevel thresholding based on gray moment preserving is used first to transform the blurred subimage in the region into a binary picture. Two approximate boundary points on the circumference of the thresholded circular region are obtained next by simple traversal. An approximate corner point is estimated from the geometric relation between the centroid and the three vertices of the triangular lamina formed by the corner pattern within the circular region. These points are then used as an initial guess for solving a system of nonlinear equations that are constructed by preserving the area and the three mass moments of the partial object lamina within the circular region. More accurate corner boundary points can finally be determined, from which not only the location but also the orientation as well as the angle of the corner can be computed. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method. © 1990.