LYVERS
er
al.:
SUBPIXEL
MEASUREMENTS
USING
AN
EDGE OPERATOR
1295
-1.5
-1.0
-.50
0.0
.50
1.0
1.5
Edge
Translation, pixels
Fig.
2.
Edge translation error. The spatial moment operator is shown as a
solid line while the gray level moment operator is shown as a dashed
line.
h+k
-1
0
1
Fig.
3.
Sampled ideal edge characterized
by
h,
Ak,
k,
l,,
and
12.
M~
=
1
hx2
dr
+
A,,
Akx'dr
+
J,,
kx2
-1
=
$h
+
fAk(1;
-
I:)
+
fk(
1
-
1;).
(10)
Substitution of
(8),
(9),
and
(IO)
into the length solution,
(5),
gives
3M2
-
MO
I,,.,
=
2Ml
Ak[ZI(l
-
1:)
-
12(1
-
l;)]
+
k12(1
-
1:)
Ak(1:
-
1:)
+
k( 1
-
1;)
- -
(11)
Equation
(11)
is the length result when the operator is
applied to sampled edges.
To determine the bias associated with the length given
in
(1 1)
and the ideal length, an image formation model
is
needed. Let the ideal sampled edge be generated by the
linear equation
which shows the incremental step gray value
Ak
is pro-
portional to the normalized distance that
1
is from the up-
per step
1,.
The sampling aperture is flat with a width of
one pixel. The constant
(
l2
-
l1
)
is the length of one pixel.
Solving (12) for
1
gives
(13)
Ak
k
1
=
12
-
-
(&
-
11).
The bias error is simply the actual length
1
minus the mo-
ment calculated length
l,,.,,
B(ll,
12,
Ak, k)
=
1
-
1M.
(14)
Substituting
(1
1)
and
(12)
into the bias equation and sim-
plifying yields
where
(16)
Ak
p=-
orp51.
k'
The bias error is zero for all roots of the numerator of
(13,
i.e.,
P(1,
-
11)2(Z,
+
12)(P
-
1)
=
0.
(17)
When
Ak
=
0
(0
=
0)
or
Ak
=
k
(0
=
1)
the length
equations agree and the bias error is zero. This condition
occurs when the edge coincides with a pixel boundary and
the three-level edge is reduced to a two-level edge. At
every pixel boundary, the bias error is zero.
The other situation where the length equations match is
when
l1
=
-12.
This occurs when the length is near the
center of the window. It should be noted that the differ-
ence
l2
-
Zl
remains constant and is equal to one pixel
width. For a window of
5
pixels, the lengths
lI
and
1,
equal
-0.2
and
0.2,
respectively, when the edge is lo-
cated within the center pixel of the window. All edge po-
sitions within this range produce no bias error from the
length equation, as can be seen in Fig.
2.
The location error is well behaved and it was empiri-
cally verified that the calculated edge location versus true
edge location is a monotonic function. Therefore, to elim-
inate the bias error that is present when the edge location
is not within the center pixel and not centered on pixel
boundaries, a look-up table procedure can be used. In this
particular implementation, the bias table was created from
edge locations spaced at
0.05
pixel intervals. Linear in-
terpolation was used to determine the bias between the
intervals. Use of the bias table to correct the calculated
length resulted in a reduction of the maximum error over
the -1.5 to
+1.5
pixel range from
0.101
to
0.0016
pix-
els. Note that although this result is for a range of
-
1.5
I
Z
I
1.5
pixels, the most critical range is
-0.5
I
1
I
0.5
pixels because for
I
1
I
>
0.5
pixels the edge is closer
to a window centered on an adjacent pixel. Note that for
1
1
I
I
0.5
pixels, the spatial moment operator has no er-
ror, and therefore a bias correction table is not necessary.