Edge detection depends not only upon the assumed model of what an edge is, but also on how this model is represented. The problem of how to represent the edge model is typically neglected, despite the fact that the representation is a bottleneck for both computational cost and accuracy. We propose to represent edge models by a partition of the edge manifold corresponding to the edge model, where each local element of the partition is described by its principal components. We describe the construction of this representation and demonstrate its benefits for various edge models.
Patrick S. Huggins, Steven W. Zucker