Detecting insects and other dark line features using isotropic masks

This paper investigates whether the efficiency of multimask schemes for the detection of line features can be improved further. It finds that isotropic masks can be used for this purpose, leading to worthwhile speedup factors. We have applied this approach to the task of locating insects in grain, and have obtained useful results with 7×7 masks. This work should also be valuable in other applications where line features have to be located, and also those where thin lines have to be tracked-such as document interpretation and p.c.b. inspection