State-of-the-art approaches for detecting filament-like
structures in noisy images rely on filters optimized for signals
of a particular shape, such as an ideal edge or ridge.
While these approaches are optimal when the image conforms
to these ideal shapes, their performance quickly degrades
on many types of real data where the image deviates
from the ideal model, and when noise processes violate a
Gaussian assumption.
In this paper, we show that by learning rotational features,
we can outperform state-of-the-art filament detection
techniques on many different kinds of imagery. More specifically,
we demonstrate superior performance for the detection
of blood vessel in retinal scans, neurons in brightfield
microscopy imagery, and streets in satellite imagery.