Image reconstruction for quality assessment of edge detectors

Extraction of the edges is a key step in image processing and there is still a continuing research effort to develop new and effective edge detection algorithms. Despite this fact, there is no single, reliable and efficient metric to evaluate the quality of an edge detector. We introduce an original method for image reconstruction that leads to edge evaluation based on image estimation. A new quantitative metric for assessment of the performance of the edge detector is also presented. The operation of the measure is established on a diverse image database using standard edge detection algorithms and the one based on partial derivatives of Boolean functions. The uses of the measure for an assortment of purposes are demonstrated and these are backed by visual assessment as well as some distance-based error functions applied on synthetic images.