3rd International Conference on Advanced Technologies

for Signal and Image Processing - ATSIP'2017

May 22-24, 2017, Fez, Morroco

A 2D- Fractional Derivative Mask for Image

Feature Edge Detection
Meriem HACINI
Laboratoire d’Analyse
des Signaux et Systémes LASS,
Université Mohamed Boudiaf,
M’sila, Algérie
Email: meriem.hacini@yahoo.fr
Akram HACINI
and Herman AKDAG
Laboratoire d’Informatique Avancée
de Saint-Denis (LIASD), France
akram.hacini@etud.univ-paris8.fr,
herman.akdag@ai.univ-paris8.fr
Fella HACHOUF
Laboratoire d’Automatique et de Robotique,
Université des Fréres Mentouri,
Constantine, Algérie

Abstract—Feature extraction is a classic problem of ma-
chine vision and image processing. Edges are often detected
using integer-order differential operators. In this paper, a one-
dimensional digital fractional-order Charef differentiator (1D-
FCD) is introduced and extended to 2D by a multi-directional
operator. The obtained 2D- fractional differentiation (2D-FCD) is
a new edge detection operation. The computed multi-directional
mask coefficients are computed in a way that image details are
detected and preserved.
Experiments on texture images have demonstrated the efficiency
of the proposed filter compared to existing techniques.
Index Terms—Edge Detection, Fractional-Order Derivative,
Mask.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Most of all basic image operations is edge detection. Edges
are useful in image analysis and interpretation in computer
vision. The definition of edge is tributary on the scope.
Although, it is generally defined as a line between related
regions with relatively different features according to some
useful characteristics such as gray level or luminance, color
and texture, etc,...
Edge detection is the fact to define what are pixels belonging
edge pixels. There exist a multitude of edge detection
methods formulated over the last three decades; where we
can distinguished those based on the first-order derivative:
Roberts operator [1], Sobel operator [2], P rewit operator [3],
the second-order derivative: Laplace Operator [4], assuming
that, image edges and noise both of maps edges and noise
belong to high frequency components. In order to deal with
noise and its effects. Edge detection algorithm have been
widely developed. Hence noise and edge detection accuracy
are conflicting. How to balance between edge detection and
noise is challenging. A new solution was presented has been
presented in this work.
Since three decades, fractional calculus has received a
growing interest and has become an important branch
of mathematics analysis [5]. Recently, fractional calculus
reached a considerable recognition by the researchers.
A multitude of mathematical formulations have been
978-1-5386-0551-6/17/$31.00 2017
c IEEE
established to define the fractional differentiation. These
methods include DuttaRoy  s method [6], Carlson s method
[7], P odlubry  s method [8] and Charef  s method [9], among
them the most famous definitions of Riemann − Liouville,
Grümwald − Letnikov and Caputo definitions[10- 12].
They have been applied in multidisciplinary domain, such as
economic, automatic, control, physics, mechanics and signal
processing. In recent days, fractional theory has been already
utilized for a multitude of problem in image processing,
such as image de-noising [13-14], image segmentation [15],
image enhancement [16]. However, this concept has been
rarely used in features extraction as edges. In this work, we
aimed on the edge and feature detection. Usual integer-order
differential operators are essential tool in edge detection,
but they damage the texture details too. To deal with this
problem, a 2D-Fractional Differentiation, 2D − F CD mask
is proposed. The coefficients of the proposed mask are multi
directional. They are computed based on Charef method.
The obtained results have demonstrated that the 2D-FCD has
the capacity to detect effectively image edges.
The outline of this paper are as follows. In Section. 2,
detailed implementation of 1D-FCD is introduced. In section.
3, a 2D- formulation of the proposed operator is defined
generalizing the FCD operator from one dimension to two
dimensions. Then a multi-directional mask is constructed
to improve the proposed operator. Numerical examples are
presented in Section. 4, and a conclusion is given in Section. 5.
II. 1D-D IGITAL FRACTIONAL - ORDER C HAREF
DIFFERENTIATOR
Basically, fractional derivative is a derivative of any depen-
dent function f (t) with real order ν. In general, derivative
has conventionally an integer order. Fractional derivative are
newly used in a multitude of applications such as filter design
[17], image processing [18] and soon. Several definitions of
the fractional models have been presented by researchers [1-3],
[6-12]. Due to less time complexity, Charef [9] definition has
been used in this paper. The mathematical Charef fractional
derivative formulation is:

1
The ν − th order Charef derivative of a function f (t) is must beings exposed. Assume the filtering window’s size
defined as: p = 2m + 1, and m is a positive integer. Using formula (4),
for ν > 0 as: the νth−order derivative of the filtering window central point
is estimated by:
∂ ν f (t)  
f ν (t) = Dν f (t) = ν (ν) (ν) (ν) (ν)
∂tν wm+1 = w0 , w1 , w2 , ..., , wm+1 . (6)
∞ N   k
1   2 gi βi
= lim+ ν [KD δ(k) + H(k) However, we find some problems when we apply the wm+1
(ν)
h→0 h h αi αi
k=0 i=0 in 2D- image processing. From equations (7) and (8) we can
N   k−1
2 gi βi observe that edge feature are extracted along horizontal and
− H(k − 1)]f ((n − k)h) (1) vertical directions with the same coefficients. Thus, wm+1
(ν)
i=0
h α i α i
is anisotropic it can be used to calculate the fractional-order
Where n = t/h is the step size, gi , αi and βi are the derivative in x or y directions. So, it is not effective because
approximation parameters defined as follows [9]: some edge features will be lost. Figure. 1(b) illustrate the result
For i = 1, 2, 3, ..., N obtained using the mask given by equation (6). It can be seen
⎧ ν+i
[ 10ν(1−ν) ] that the major features are extracted, but some details are not
⎪
⎪ αi = 1 + 2.10
⎪
⎪ distinguished with a clear appearance of false contours.
⎪
⎪ βi = αi − 2
⎪
⎪ Let f (x, y) denotes the gray value of the position (x, y) in the
⎪
⎪ N
⎨ i−j+ν
[1 − 10[ 10ν(1−ν) ] ] image f .
(2) Using the 2D-FCD mask described on equation (6), the ν -
⎪
⎪ gi = −KD
j=0
⎪
⎪ N order derivatives of f (x, y) in the x− and y− directions can
⎪
⎪ ν+i
[ 10ν(1−ν) ] i−j
⎪
⎪
⎪ 10 [1 − 10[ 10ν(1−ν) ] ] be calculated by
⎪
⎩ j=0
i=j ∂ ν f (x, y)
≈ w0 (ν)f (x, y) + w1 (ν)f (x − 1, y)+
1
(80ν+1) ∂xν
Where KD = 10−ν and N = integer[ 2 (1−ν) ], N w2 (ν)f (x − 2, y) + ... + wL−1 (ν)f (x − L + 1, y) (7)
is the number of approximation parameters for a better
approximation.
∂ ν f (x, y)
KD is a constant ν−order dependent. ≈ w0 (ν)f (x, y) + w1 (ν)f (x, y − 1)+
In practice, the Dirac function δ(k) is given by ∂y ν
w2 (ν)f (x, y − 2) + ... + wL−1 (ν)f (x, y − L + 1) (8)

1 if k == 0
δ(k) = H  (k) = (3)
0 if k =
 0.
B. The improved 2D-IFCD mask
Where H(k) is the Heaviside function.
Considering numerical calculation, we rewrite the discrete In this section, a multi-directional mask is proposed. The
approximation at point t of one-dimensional left-sided mask is rotational invariant. If the image is processed with a
fractional differentiation as: nonlinear filter, the values of its pixels are convolved with a
pxq size mask using:
∞
∂ ν f (t) ν 1  a
 b

= D f (t) = wk (ν)f (t − kh) (4) ν
∂tν hν
k=0
g (x, y) = W ν (p, q)f (x + p, y + q) (9)
p=−a q=−b
Where h is the sampling step, t = kh, for (k = 0, 1, ..., L)
in the interval [0, t], equal to 1 in our case. wk (ν) are the Where f (x, y) is the value of a pixel, and W ν (p, q) is the val-
approximation coefficients. ues of the mask. To ensure that the mask wmxn has a specific
central point, m and n must be odd. Then, a = (m − 1)/2 and
N   k b = (n − 1)/2 and the distance between the mask center and
2 gi βi
wk (ν) = KD δ(k) + H(k) the margin of the image of the image is less than (n − 1)/2
i=0
h α i α i
pixels. Furthermore, an improved fractional-order differential
N   k−1
2 gi βi masks 2D − IF CD in the x and y directions, have been
− H(k − 1). (5) proposed (Figure.2). It is constructed to extract texture features
i=0
h α i α i
and image details. The proposed masks described in Figure.2
III. 2D-FCD- BASED EDGE DETECTION METHOD are complementary. They are selected in this way to better scan
vertical, horizontal, left and right diagonal pixels surrounding
A. Generalization
the central pixel. The fact that the proposed mask can consider
This section, introduced the extension of the fractional more neighboring pixels, is an excellent tool for feature and
Charef differentiation from 1D to 2D. With a view to image details extraction, which can preserve texture and edge
explain more clearly the process, some fundamental definitions details.

2
 (a) Original image
Fig. 1. The edge extraction result of the proposed operator on two different scene.
(a) (b)
Fig. 2. Fractional-order differential masks in the (a): x- and (b): y- directions
Feature extraction by the proposed mask are denoted as
Fxν and Fyν respectively. They are the result obtained from
the correlation of the Wxν and Wyν masks and image. Hence,
calculate the gradient magnitude of the image, which is an
important quantity in edge detection.
As for classical integer order differentiation, the fractional-
order magnitude measure can be computed as:
1
∇ν f = mag(Δν f ) = [(Fxν )2 + (Fyν )2 ] 2
Where mag denotes the magnitude. This quantity gives the
maximum rate of increase or decrease of f (x, y) per unit
distance in the direction of ∇ν f .
Extracted feature on image of Figure.1(a) by the proposed
mask are shown in Figure.3(c), for ν = 1.5. It can be seen
that the proposed 2D − IF CD mask gives best results.
IV. E VALUATION OF THE I MPROVED 2D-IFCD OPERATOR
FOR AN EDGE FEATURE DETECTION
In this section, the obtained results obtained by the 2D −
IF CD have been compared to those of four other meth-
ods: Sobel operator [2], Laplace operator [4], Riemann −
Liouville operator [10 ] and Grümwald − Letnikov op-
erator [11]. To ensure the quality of experiments, optimal
parameters for the above selected methods were chosen. We
implemented the proposed algorithm using M atlab2015a on
(b) 2D-FCD
an IntelCorei5 of 2.2GHz, 4GB memory, using 64bits
W indows10.
In order to illustrate the performance of the Improved 2D-
IFCD mask, gray-scale artificial and real images have been
chosen.The computational CPU Time of our algorithm are also
compared.
A. Comparison of the Improved 2D-IFCD with integral dif-
ferential operator mask
Most typical differential operator masks such as the first-
order Sobel, P rewit and Roberts operators, and the second-
order Laplace operator, are in fact integral differential oper-
ators. They may perform well in the high frequency regions
but their performances will deteriorate when applied to rich
texture patterns in smooth regions.
Figure. 4 illustrate obtained results by all the operators. Results
of theLaplace and Sobel are shown in Figure.4(b) and (c),
respectively. The results show that texture in some areas is
removed (Figure.4(b)). In conjunction, an excessive enhance-
ment of the high frequency components appears, Hence, wide
white edges in these regions are created Figure.4(c).
Different from the integral differential operators, the proposed
(10) method takes into consideration texture details. It avoids false
detection and it emphasis the high frequencies Figure.4(d).
In conclusion the 2D − IF CD operator outperforms the
traditional integral differential operators.
B. Comparison with other fractional differential operators
Fractional differential methods are able to preserve
texture detail. However, traditional methods usually ignore
local texture features. The performance of the proposed
algorithm is compared with Grümwald − Letnikov, [11]
and Riemann − Liouville [10] method in Figure.5. As
shown in Figure.5 (b), while details are well extracted by
Grümwald − Letnikov method in all cases, the overall
brightness of the images decreases. Figure.5(c) shows the
edge detection results based on the Riemann − Liouville
fractional differential operator, the method cannot effectively
take into consideration the complexity and diversity of local
3
 (a) Original image (b) 2D-FCD (c) Improved 2D-IFCD
Fig. 3. The edge extraction result of the proposed operator on two different scene.

texture patterns, thus leading to only marginal edges in
Figure.5(c). Our approach improves the self - correlation in
images and therefore it can detect the local complex texture
patterns. It is noticed that, the curved patterns of image objects
as parrot, fruits and girl face are well detected (Figure.5(d)).
Textures as wool, hair and feathers are more distinct and
brighter. Table.1. summarizes the average CPU process
time of different fractional methods. i.e., The proposed
2D − IF CD mask presents the best processing time it is
able to yield the best result in less CPU time than the G − L
and R − L operators. In summary, the proposed algorithm
can effectively preserve texture details and brightness. The
2D − IF CD operator presents a lower CPU time and more
effective results than the other compared operators.
of the main limitation of the previous fractional derivative
method in terms of edge detection, texture details preservation,
the 2D operator is finally improved by defining x− and y−
multi-directional operators, and a 2D − IF CD based edge
extraction have been proposed. Numerical experiments have
been carried out to evaluate the performance of 2D − IF CD-
based edge extraction method. The obtained results have
demonstrated its validity. In the feature, the proposed method
will be extended to an adaptive fractional-derivative operator.
Moreover, due to low computational complexity of the method,
a future direction may be used of the proposed operator in
image processing.
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5
 (a) (b) (c) (d)
Fig. 5. Results of different fractional differential operator methods: Four test images are selected: Parrot, Fruits, Cat and Girl.(a) original, (b) G-L , (c) R-L,
(d) 2D-IFCD result.