Optimization of an Hough transform algorithm for the search of a center

We present improvements of an adaptative Hough transform algorithm applied to the search of a common center of circular or partially circular components present in an image. The efficiency has been considerably optimized by a continuous update of a list of voting points, in conjunction with the evolution of the accumulator size and position. The method was implemented as a plugin for the scientific open source image processing package ImageJ. Although initially designed for X-ray diffraction analysis, numerous other applications are quoted in different other scientific field, in image measurement techniques, industrial vision, and biometry, i.e. for iris localization.