A deep learning-based edge detection algorithm using holistically-nested fully convolutional neural networks.
Holistically-Nested Edge Detection (HED) is a deep learning-based computer vision algorithm for detecting edges and object boundaries in images. It uses a fully convolutional neural network architecture with deep supervision to automatically learn hierarchical features, achieving state-of-the-art accuracy on benchmark datasets while maintaining fast processing speeds. The approach treats edge detection as an image-to-image prediction problem rather than a traditional classification task.
Computer vision researchers and practitioners working on edge detection, image segmentation, or boundary analysis tasks, particularly those interested in deep learning approaches to low-level vision problems.
HED provides significantly better accuracy than previous edge detection methods while maintaining practical processing speeds, thanks to its holistically-nested architecture that learns rich hierarchical representations through deep supervision. It represents a fundamental advancement in how edge detection is approached using deep learning.
code for Holistically-Nested Edge Detection
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Achieves ODS F-score of .790 on BSD500 dataset, significantly advancing benchmark performance as documented in the ICCV paper.
Processes images in 0.4 seconds each, enabling practical batch usage for research and preprocessing tasks.
Uses side outputs at multiple scales to guide hierarchical feature learning, improving edge detection robustness across object sizes.
Enables end-to-end image-to-image prediction without fully connected layers, allowing efficient handling of varying input sizes.
Relies on Caffe, which is largely deprecated and has a steeper learning curve compared to modern frameworks like PyTorch, complicating maintenance and updates.
Requires installing Caffe prerequisites, downloading specific pretrained models (e.g., 56MB and 248MB files), and extracting data, which can be error-prone and time-consuming.
Lacks support for recent deep learning tools and libraries, making it difficult to integrate with contemporary pipelines or optimize for newer hardware.