Robinson compass mask

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A Robinson compass mask is a type of compass mask used for edge detection. It has eight major compass orientations, [1] each will extract the edges in respect to its direction. A combined use of compass masks of different directions could detect the edges from different angles.

Edge detection includes a variety of mathematical methods that aim at identifying points in a digital image at which the image brightness changes sharply or, more formally, has discontinuities. The points at which image brightness changes sharply are typically organized into a set of curved line segments termed edges. The same problem of finding discontinuities in one-dimensional signals is known as step detection and the problem of finding signal discontinuities over time is known as change detection. Edge detection is a fundamental tool in image processing, machine vision and computer vision, particularly in the areas of feature detection and feature extraction.

Contents

Technical explanation

The Robinson compass mask [2] is defined by taking a single mask and rotating it to form eight orientations:

The direction axis [3] is the line of zeros in the matrix. Robinson compass mask is similar to kirsch compass masks, but is simpler to implement. Since the matrix coefficients only contains 0, 1, 2, and are symmetrical, only the results of four masks [4] need to be calculated, the other four results are the negation of the first four results. An edge, or contour is an tiny area with neighboring distinct pixel values. The convolution of each mask with the image would create a high value output where there is a rapid change of pixel value, thus an edge point is found. All the detected edge points would line up as edges.

Example

An example of Robinson compass masks applied to the original image. Obviously, the edges in the direction of the mask is enhanced.

original_image Robison original image.jpg
original_image
Robinson North Mask Robinson North Mask.jpg
Robinson North Mask
Robinson NorthWest Mask Robinson NorthWest Mask.jpg
Robinson NorthWest Mask
Robinson West Mask Robinson West Mask.jpg
Robinson West Mask
Robinson SouthWest Mask Robinson SouthWest Mask.jpg
Robinson SouthWest Mask
Robinson South Mask Robinson South Mask.jpg
Robinson South Mask
Robinson SouthEast Mask Robinson SouthEast Mask.jpg
Robinson SouthEast Mask
Robinson East Mask Robinson East Mask.jpg
Robinson East Mask
Robinson NorthEast Mask Robinson NorthEast Mask.jpg
Robinson NorthEast Mask

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References

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  3. S Edy Victor Haryanto, M. Y. Mashor, A. S. Abdul Nasir, H. Jaafar, "A fast and accurate detection of Schizont plasmodium falciparum using channel color space segmentation method", Cyber and IT Service Management (CITSM) 2017 5th International Conference on, pp. 1-4, 2017.
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