Ellipse-specific fitting by relaxing the 3L constraints with semidefinite programming

This paper presents a new efficient method to increase the accuracy and the robustness of ellipse fitting, by utilizing the 3L algorithm and semidefinite programming (SDP). The novelty lies on the combination of relaxed geometric distance constraints and semidefinite programming framework. Due to the relaxed 3L constraints, the proposed approach provides high robustness in the presence of noise. The accuracy of the final solution is prominently increased even if the data suffer from strong occlusions or noises. The proposed method represents significant advantages in both accuracy and robustness. Experimental results and comparisons with state-of-the-art fitting methods demonstrate the improvements in ellipse fitting.