The least-squares fitting minimizes the squares sum of error-of-fit in pred
efined measures. By the geometric fitting, the error distances are defined
with the orthogonal, or shortest, distances from the given points to the ge
ometric feature to be fitted. For the geometric fitting of circle/sphere/el
lipse/hyperbola/parabota, simple and robust nonparametric algorithms are pr
oposed. These are based on the coordinate description of the corresponding
point on the geometric feature for the given point, where the connecting li
ne of the two points is the shortest path from the given point to the geome
tric feature to be fitted. (C) 2001 Pattern Recognition Society. Published
by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.