A Novel Scheme Based on the Diffusion to Edge Detection

A novel scheme of edge detection based on the physical law of diffusion is presented in this paper. Though the most current studies are using data based methods such as deep neural networks, these methods on machine learning need big data of labeled ground truth as well as a large amount of resources for training. On the other hand, the widely used traditional methods are based on the gradient of the grayscale or color of images with using different sorts of mathematical tools to accomplish the mission. Instead of treating the outline of an object in an image as a kind of gradient of grayscale or color, our scheme deals with the edge detection as a character of an energy diffusing in the space of media such as charge-coupled device. By using the characteristic function of diffusion, the information of the energy will be extracted. The scheme preserves the structural information of images very well. Because it comes from the inhere law of images' physical property, it has a unified mathematical framework for images' edge detection under different conditions, for example, multiscales, diferent light conditions, and so on. Moreover, it has low computational complexity.