A hierarchical line and segment extraction algorithm, based on a pyram
id, is described. Initially, lines are detected in small windows using
the Hough transform. The detected lines are then merged using a dista
nce criteria thus avoiding a reaccumulation process at each level of t
he pyramid. The hierarchical merging process is efficiently performed
on lines rather than on segments (since there are many more segments t
han fines). The detected lines are broken into segments, at the top of
the pyramid. The proposed approach is compared to similar approaches
based on hierarchical feature extraction. The authors show that their
approach combines the advantages of other works and avoids their drawb
acks such as quantisation effect and lack of robustness.