Linear scale-space has first been proposed in Japan

Linear scale-space is considered to be a modern bottom-up tool in computer vision. The American and European vision community, however, is unaware of the fact that it has already been axiomatically derived in 1959 in a Japanese paper by Taizo Iijima. This result formed the starting point of vast linear scale-space research in Japan ranging from various axiomatic derivations over deep structure analysis to applications to optical character recognition. Since the outcomes of these activities are unknown to western scale-space researchers, we give an overview of the contribution to the development of linear scale-space theories and analyses. In particular, we review four Japanese axiomatic approaches that substantiate linear scale-space theories proposed between 1959 and 1981. By juxtaposing them to ten American or European axiomatics, we present an overview of the state-of-the-art in Gaussian scale-space axiomatics. Furthermore, we show that many techniques for analysing linear scale-space have also been pioneered by Japanese researchers.