THE HOUGH TRANSFORM HAS O(N) COMPLEXITY ON NXN MESH CONNECTED COMPUTERS

This paper presents algorithms for implementing an important image processing operation, the Hough transform, on a mesh connected computer (MCC). The MCC consists of an N × N array of processors, each of which holds a single pixel of the image. The MCC operates in a Single Instruction Stream, Multiple Data Stream (SIMD) mode, which is in agreement with the hardware constraints found in existing meshes. Five algorithms for computing the Hough transform are presented. These algorithms use a number of different techniques, and they have varying time complexities and architectural requirements. The most notable algorithm presented computes any P angles of the Hough transform in O(N + P) time and uses only a constant amount of memory per processor. Because the Hough transform is a particular case of the discrete Radon transform, all of the algorithms will be presented for computing the Radon transform of gray-level images.