Processing Hexagonal Images in a Virtual Environment

For many years the concept of using hexagonal pixels for image capture has been investigated, and several advantages of such an approach have been highlighted. Recently there has been a renewed interest in the use of hexagonal images, representation of architectures for such images and general hexagonal image processing. Therefore, we present multiscale hexagonal gradient operators, developed within the finite element framework, for use directly on hexagonal pixel-based images. We demonstrate these operators using two environments: a virtual hexagonal environment and the direct use of simulated hexagonal pixel-based images. In both scenarios, we evaluate the proposed operators and compare them with the use of standard image processing operators on typical square pixel-based images, demonstrating improved results in the case of simulated hexagonal pixel-based images.