XDoG: An eXtended difference-of-Gaussians compendium including advanced image stylization

Abstract

Recent extensions to the standard difference-of-Gaussians (DoG) edge detection operator have rendered it less susceptible to noise and increased its aesthetic appeal. Despite these advances, the technical subtleties and stylistic potential of the DoG operator are often overlooked. This paper offers a detailed review of the DoG operator and its extensions, highlighting useful relationships to other image processing techniques. It also presents many new results spanning a variety of styles, including pencil-shading, pastel, hatching, and woodcut. Additionally, we demonstrate a range of subtle artistic effects, such as ghosting, speed-lines, negative edges, indication, and abstraction, all of which are obtained using an extended DoG formulation, or slight modifications thereof. In all cases, the visual quality achieved by the extended DoG operator is comparable to or better than those of systems dedicated to a single style. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.