Ellipse detection based on symmetry

In this paper, a novel and generic approach is proposed for detecting ellipses from symmetric contours in a picture efficiently. The idea is based on the detection of the symmetric axes from contours in a Hough-based approach, so as to transform a high-dimensional problem into two two-dimensional ones. From the idea, the algorithms for detecting symmetric axes and ellipses are designed and tested. From the algorithm analyses, this method is practical and runs faster than the current-reported methods. By experiments, this method demonstrates highly effective and robust results. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.