Contour detection based on contextual influences

A contour edge detector combing surround facilitation and suppression is proposed in this paper. Specifically, the detector follows the flow of the Canny edge detector while incorporating surround facilitation and suppression into it. Firstly, edge gradient magnitude and edge density information is utilized to classify potential contour points and texture points approximately. Secondly, surround facilitation and suppression are applied on the potential contour points and texture points respectively to enhance the contours and suppress textures. Finally, contour map is constructed through two hysteresis thresholding procedures. Performance comparison with three other edge detectors is made and the experimental results show that our contour detection method performs better.