A relaxational approach to the Hough transform

A cooperative Hough transform (CHT) that is similar to the relaxation process is suggested to reduce the amount of storage needed for the parameter space. The parameter space in the CHT is represented as a set of one-dimensional arrays that are designated by projection arrays. The votes in this space are computed in a many-to-one fashion. They are accumulated on the projection arrays with some weighting values, which are determined by using the contextual information obtained from the relation between the local maxima in these arrays. The CHT requires a very small amount of storage, and hence can be implemented in microcomputers. It is especially useful when the parameter space has a large number of dimensions. It is applicable to nonanalytical shapes as well as analytical shapes