Saddle-node dynamics for edge detection

We demonstrate how the formulation of a nonlinear scale-space filter can be used for edge detection and junction analysis. By casting edge-preserving filtering in terms of maximizing information content subject to an average cost function, the computed cost at each pixel location becomes a local measure of edgeness. This computation depends on a single scale parameter and the given image data. Unlike previous approaches which require careful tuning of the filter kernels for various types of edges, our scheme is general enough to be able to handle different edges, such as lines, step edges, corners and junctions. Anisotropy in the data is handled automatically by the nonlinear dynamics.<>