# ELSED: Enhanced Line SEgment Drawing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.03144 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.03144/

## Key facts

- Cited by 23 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Aug 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [HPatches: A benchmark and evaluation of handcrafted and learned local descriptors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.05939/) (2017)
- [Line Segment Detection Using Transformers without Edges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.01909/) (2021)
- [End-to-End Wireframe Parsing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03246/) (2019)
- [Learning to Parse Wireframes in Images of Man-Made Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.07527/) (2020)
- [Holistically-Attracted Wireframe Parsing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01663/) (2020)
- [PL-SLAM: a Stereo SLAM System through the Combination of Points and Line Segments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.09479/) (2017)
- [Learning Attraction Field Representation for Robust Line Segment Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02122/) (2018)
- [SOLD2: Self-supervised Occlusion-aware Line Description and Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03362/) (2021)
- [Learning to Reconstruct 3D Manhattan Wireframes from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.07482/) (2019)
- [Fully Convolutional Line Parsing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.11207/) (2021)
- [Structure-SLAM: Low-Drift Monocular SLAM in Indoor Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.01963/) (2020)
- [A Minimal Closed-Form Solution for Multi-Perspective Pose Estimation using Points and Lines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.09970/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [GlueStick: Robust Image Matching by Sticking Points and Lines Together](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02008/) (2023)
- [DeepLSD: Line Segment Detection and Refinement with Deep Image Gradients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.07766/) (2022)
- [Fully Geometric Panoramic Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19904/) (2024)
- [A Comprehensive Review of Image Line Segment Detection and Description: Taxonomies, Comparisons, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.00264/) (2023)
- [TwinTex: Geometry-aware Texture Generation for Abstracted 3D Architectural Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11258/) (2023)
- [ScaleLSD: Scalable Deep Line Segment Detection Streamlined](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09369/) (2025)
- [LF-PGVIO: A Visual-Inertial-Odometry Framework for Large Field-of-View Cameras using Points and Geodesic Segments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.06663/) (2023)
- [EVOLIN Benchmark: Evaluation of Line Detection and Association](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05162/) (2023)
- [Level-line Guided Edge Drawing for Robust Line Segment Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05883/) (2023)
- [Galibr: Targetless LiDAR-Camera Extrinsic Calibration Method via Ground Plane Initialization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11599/) (2024)
- [MiLSD: A Micro Line-Segment Detector for Resource-Constrained Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.06600/) (2026)
- [Linear Object Detection in Document Images using Multiple Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16968/) (2023)
- [Learning Multiple Representations with Inconsistency-Guided Detail Regularization for Mask-Guided Matting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19213/) (2024)
- [Gr-IoU: Ground-Intersection over Union for Robust Multi-Object Tracking with 3D Geometric Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.03252/) (2024)
- [Efficient Lines Detection for Robot Soccer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19469/) (2025)
- [Aligned Anchor Groups Guided Line Segment Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.00786/) (2025)
- [Enabling Stroke-Level Structural Analysis of Hieroglyphic Scripts without Language-Specific Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.05508/) (2026)
- [RoEL: Robust Event-based 3D Line Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.18258/) (2026)
- [COMPASS: COmpact Multi-channel Prior-map And Scene Signature for Floor-Plan-Based Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.25388/) (2026)
- [Unified and Efficient Point-Line Local Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.19894/) (2026)
- [SweepLSD: A One-Pass, O(width)-Memory Line Segment Detector with an Integer-Only Streaming Core and a Real-Time FPGA Realization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.22086/) (2026)
- [STARLINC: Satellite Trail Artifact Removal using Inter-Frame Correlation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29145/) (2026)
- [NPLSD: Accelerating Line-Segment Detection on NPU Microcontrollers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.25022/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Detecting local features, such as corners, segments or blobs, is the first step in the pipeline of many Computer Vision applications. Its speed is crucial for real-time applications. In this paper we present ELSED, the fastest line segment detector in the literature. The key for its efficiency is a local segment growing algorithm that connects gradient-aligned pixels in presence of small discontinuities. The proposed algorithm not only runs in devices with very low end hardware, but may also be parametrized to foster the detection of short or longer segments, depending on the task at hand. We also introduce new metrics to evaluate the accuracy and repeatability of segment detectors. In our experiments with different public benchmarks we prove that our method accounts the highest repeatability and it is the most efficient in the literature. In the experiments we quantify the accuracy traded for such gain.