Perceptual grouping and the Hough transform

A modification of the Hough transform has been devised and tested. It incorporates a post processing stage in which the voting edge points are tested according to perceptual criteria. The perceptual criteria are derived from the Gestalt psychologists work in characterizing the human vision system and include similarity in intensity, similarity in color, good boundary continuity, etc. Edge points which fail on these criteria are eliminated before the final vote in the Hough transform is taken. The method allows weak, but perceptually significant, information to be retained, even in the presence of noise. The method has been applied to the detection of curved boundaries in images of the human colon.