Lane Line Detection and Object Scene Segmentation Using Otsu Thresholding and the Fast Hough Transform for Intelligent Vehicles in Complex Road Conditions

An Otsu-threshold- and Canny-edge-detection-based fast Hough transform (FHT) approach to lane detection was proposed to improve the accuracy of lane detection for autonomous vehicle driving. During the last two decades, autonomous vehicles have become very popular, and it is constructive to avoid traffic accidents due to human mistakes. The new generation needs automatic vehicle intelligence. One of the essential functions of a cutting-edge automobile system is lane detection. This study recommended the idea of lane detection through improved (extended) Canny edge detection using a fast Hough transform. The Gaussian blur filter was used to smooth out the image and reduce noise, which could help to improve the edge detection accuracy. An edge detection operator known as the Sobel operator calculated the gradient of the image intensity to identify edges in an image using a convolutional kernel. These techniques were applied in the initial lane detection module to enhance the characteristics of the road lanes, making it easier to detect them in the image. The Hough transform was then used to identify the routes based on the mathematical relationship between the lanes and the vehicle. It did this by converting the image into a polar coordinate system and looking for lines within a specific range of contrasting points. This allowed the algorithm to distinguish between the lanes and other features in the image. After this, the Hough transform was used for lane detection, making it possible to distinguish between left and right lane marking detection extraction; the region of interest (ROI) must be extracted for traditional approaches to work effectively and easily. The proposed methodology was tested on several image sequences. The least-squares fitting in this region was then used to track the lane. The proposed system demonstrated high lane detection in experiments, demonstrating that the identification method performed well regarding reasoning speed and identification accuracy, which considered both accuracy and real-time processing and could satisfy the requirements of lane recognition for lightweight automatic driving systems

Benchmarking Image Processing Algorithms for Unmanned Aerial System-Assisted Crack Detection in Concrete Structures

This paper summarizes the results of traditional image processing algorithms for detection of defects in concrete using images taken by Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs). Such algorithms are useful for improving the accuracy of crack detection during autonomous inspection of bridges and other structures, and they have yet to be compared and evaluated on a dataset of concrete images taken by UAS. The authors created a generic image processing algorithm for crack detection, which included the major steps of filter design, edge detection, image enhancement, and segmentation, designed to uniformly compare dierent edge detectors. Edge detection was carried out by six filters in the spatial (Roberts, Prewitt, Sobel, and Laplacian of Gaussian) and frequency (Butterworth and Gaussian) domains. These algorithms were applied to fifty images each of defected and sound concrete. Performances of the six filters were compared in terms of accuracy, precision, minimum detectable crack width, computational time, and noise-to-signal ratio. In general, frequency domain techniques were slower than spatial domain methods because of the computational intensity of the Fourier and inverse Fourier transformations used to move between spatial and frequency domains. Frequency domain methods also produced noisier images than spatial domain methods. Crack detection in the spatial domain using the Laplacian of Gaussian filter proved to be the fastest, most accurate, and most precise method, and it resulted in the finest detectable crack width. The Laplacian of Gaussian filter in spatial domain is recommended for future applications of real-time crack detection using UAS

Road crack detection using adaptive multi resolution thresholding techniques

Machine vision is very important for ensuring the success of intelligent transportation systems, particularly in the area of road maintenance. For this reason, many studies had been focusing on automatic image-based crack detection as a replacement for manual inspection that had depended on the specialist’s knowledge and expertise. In the image processing technique, the pre-processing and edge detection stages are important for filtering out noises and in enhancing the quality of the edges in the image. Since threshold is one of the powerful methods used in the edge detection of an image, we have therefore proposed a modified Otsu-Canny Edge Detection Algorithm in the selection of the two threshold values as well as implemented a multi-resolution level fixed partitioning method in the analysis of the global and local threshold values of the image. This is then followed by a statistical measure in selecting the edge image with the best global threshold. This study had utilized the road crack image dataset that were obtained from Crackforest. The results had revealed the proposed method to not only perform better than the conventional Canny edge detection method but had also shown the maximum value derived from the local threshold of 5x5 partitioned image outperforming the other partitioned scales

New foreground markers for Drosophila cell segmentation using marker-controlled watershed

Image segmentation consists of partitioning the image into different objects of interest. For a biological image, the segmentation step is important to understand the biological process. However, it is a challenging task due to the presence of different dimensions for cells, intensity inhomogeneity, and clustered cells. The marker-controlled watershed (MCW) is proposed for segmentation, outperforming the classical watershed. Besides, the choice of markers for this algorithm is important and impacts the results. For this work, two foreground markers are proposed: kernels, constructed with the software Fiji and Obj.MPP markers, constructed with the framework Obj.MPP. The new proposed algorithms are compared to the basic MCW. Furthermore, we prove that Obj.MPP markers are better than kernels. Indeed, the Obj.MPP framework takes into account cell properties such as shape, radiometry, and local contrast. Segmentation results, using new markers and illustrated on real Drosophila dataset, confirm the good performance quality in terms of quantitative and qualitative evaluation

IMPROVED LICENSE PLATE LOCALIZATION ALGORITHM BASED ON MORPHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS

Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) systems have become an important tool to track stolen cars, access control, and monitor traffic. ALPR system consists of locating the license plate in an image, followed by character detection and recognition. Since the license plate can exist anywhere within an image, localization is the most important part of ALPR and requires greater processing time. Most ALPR systems are computationally intensive and require a high-performance computer. The proposed algorithm differs significantly from those utilized in previous ALPR technologies by offering a fast algorithm, composed of structural elements which more precisely conducts morphological operations within an image, and can be implemented in portable devices with low computation capabilities. The proposed algorithm is able to accurately detect and differentiate license plates in complex images. This method was first tested through MATLAB with an on-line public database of Greek license plates which is a popular benchmark used in previous works. The proposed algorithm was 100% accurate in all clear images, and achieved 98.45% accuracy when using the entire database which included complex backgrounds and license plates obscured by shadow and dirt. Second, the efficiency of the algorithm was tested in devices with low computational processing power, by translating the code to Python, and was 300% faster than previous work

SEPARATION OF OVERLAPPING OBJECT SEGMENTATION USING LEVEL SET WITH AUTOMATIC INITALIZATION ON DENTAL PANORAMIC RADIOGRAPH

To extract features on dental objects, it is necessary to segment the teeth. Segmentation is separating between the teeth (objects) with another part than teeth (background). The process of segmenting individual teeth has done a lot of the recently research and obtained good results. However, when faced with overlapping teeth, this is quite challenging. Overlapping tooth segmentation using the latest algorithm produces an object that should be segmented into two objects, instantly becoming one object. This is due to the overlapping between two teeth. To separate overlapping teeth, it is necessary to extract the overlapping object first. Level set method is widely used to segment overlap objects, but it has a limitation that needs to define the initial level set method manually by the user. In this study, an automatic initialization strategy is proposed for the level set method to segment overlapping teeth using hierarchical cluster analysis on dental panoramic radiographs images. The proposed strategy was able to initialize overlapping objects properly with accuracy of 73%.  Evaluation to measure quality of segmentation result are using misscassification error (ME) and relative foreground area error (RAE). ME and RAE were calculated based on the average results of individual tooth segmentation and obtain 16.41% and 52.14%, respectively. This proposed strategy are expected to be able to help separate the overlapping teeth for human age estimation through dental images in forensic odontology

A new edge detection approach via neutrosophy based on maximum norm entropy

It is a quite important step to find object edges in applications such as object recognition, classification and segmentation. Therefore, the edge detection algorithm to be used directly influences the performance of these applications. In this study, a new edge detection method based on Neutrosophic Set (NS) structure via using maximum norm entropy (EDA-NMNE) is proposed. Many experts and intelligence systems, including the fuzzy system, do not satisfactorily succeed in resolving indeterminacies and deficiencies. However, in the NS approach, problems are solved by dividing them into True (T), False (F) and Indeterminacy (I) subsets. In addition, because the approach has a powerful algorithmic structure, NS’s conditions with indeterminate and missing situations can be solved successfully