An Approach to Edge Detection on a Virtual Hexagonal Structure

Hexagonal structure is another image structure alternative to traditional square image structure for image processing and computer vision. The geometrical arrangement of pixels on a hexagonal structure can be described as a collection of hexagonal pixels. Because all the existing hardware for capturing image and for displaying image are produced based on square structure, it becomes important to find a proper software approach to mimic hexagonal structure so that images represented on the traditional square structure can be smoothly converted from or to the images on hexagonal structure. For accurate image processing, it is critical to best maintain the image resolution during the image conversion. In this paper, a bilinear interpolation algorithm that is used to convert an image from square structure to hexagonal structure is presented. Based on this, an edge detection method is proposed. Our experimental results show that the bilinear interpolation improves the edge detection accuracy.