Line segment linking algorithm based on gradient orientation

Considering that existing line segment detection algorithms may detect a long line segment as several short fragmented segments, a novel line segment linking algorithm is proposed in this paper to improve the performance of line segment detection. Since the gradient orientations of points on the Right Linking Segments (RLSs) have better consistency than those on Wrong Linking Segments (WLSs), a feature descriptor is designed for each candidate linking segment based on the gradient orientation information that can effectively distinguish RLSs from WLSs. Experiment results of the testing images show that the proposed method can greatly improve the original line segment detection results by connecting most fragmented line segments more accurately.