THE TOPOLOGY OF LOCALES AND ITS EFFECTS ON POSITION UNCERTAINTY

The precision to which the position of a target in a digital image can be estimated, may be analyzed by considering the possible digital representations of the target. Such an analysis leads to regions of indistinguishable target position, referred to as locales. By considering the density, distribution, and shape of these locales the available precision can be estimated. Previously, such analyses have presumed an absence of noise in the digital image. It is shown here how the noise tolerance for position estimation is affected by the topological properties of locales, such as locale connectivity, adjacency, and clustering.