Evaluation of edge detection algorithms

In the past two decades several algorithms have been developed to extract the contour of homogeneous regions within digital images. A lot of the attention is focused to edge detection, being a crucial part in most of the algorithms. The classical edge operators emphasize the high frequency components in the image and therefore act poorly in cases of moderate low SNR and/or low spatial resolution of the imaging device. The awareness of this has lead to new approaches in which balanced trade-offs are sought between noise suppression, image deblurring and the ability to resolve interfering edges, altogether resulting in operators acting like bandpass filters. The ultimate goal of this work is to arrive at an evaluation scheme with criteria reflecting the requirements issuing the major application of edge detectors: contour extraction