Connectivity-based multiple-circle fitting

This paper proposes a connectivity-based method for circle fitting. The use of pixel connectivity effectively avoids false circle detection, improves the robustness against noise and significantly reduces the computational load. The desired circular models are extracted by searching for meaningful circular arcs. The algorithm does not require a good initial guess, and is effective for extracting an a priori unknown number of circles even when the number of outliers exceeds 50%. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method performs well in detecting multiple intersecting or occluded circles. (C) 2003 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.