I'm trying to understand why the Laplacian operator is used in blob detection in image analysis. I must admit that in trying to figure out why the Laplacian is useful in this application, I've really confused myself with the different uses of the word 'Laplace.' For instance, Wikipedia has many articles on this, and the ones I'm having trouble unifying conceptually are the Laplace Transform and the Laplace Operator.
From co-workers and some reading on the internet, I have come to very shallowly think of my Laplacian convolutions on images as performing something similar to the second derivative, where the most quickly changing areas on the image are what become highlighted in the new, convolved image. But I don't see how From the second derivate page on the Laplace Operator this makes a lot of sensereading . This doesn't make sense to me from the article about page on the Laplace Transform. My question then, I do however see think, is how it makes sense for the Laplace operator (it's the definition). How are the Laplace Operator and the Laplace Transform related? If I don't can seehow to get , from the former definition, that the Laplace Operator is basically doing the second derivative, I would think I should be able to see something similar from the latterLaplace Transform. But I don't. Am I mistaken in thinking that the Laplace Transform and the Laplace operator are the same thing? How are they related?
