Mathematics applied to image processing Edge detection by Kristian Sandberg Department of Applied Mathematics University of Colorado at Boulder Images provided by The Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology , University of Colorado at Boulder. Original image Electron microscopy image of a cell. Edge map of the image. Edge detection provides an automatic way of finding boundaries of one or more objects in an image. From an image containing many objects edge detection allows us to single out a particular object of interest.
Edge detection is used in many applications.
Image analysis in medicine, biology or in movie production usually requires thousands of images to be processed. Therefore automatization is crucial. For example, white may be given the value 1 and black the value 0. For each pixel in the image we measure the color intensity of the pixel and subtract the color intensity of nearby pixels. In the right image above, we have displayed the intensity difference.