1 Answers
In statistics and signal processing, step detection is the process of finding abrupt changes in the mean level of a time series or signal. It is usually considered as a special case of the statistical method known as change detection or change point detection. Often, the step is small and the time series is corrupted by some kind of noise, and this makes the problem challenging because the step may be hidden by the noise. Therefore, statistical and/or signal processing algorithms are often required.
The step detection problem occurs in multiple scientific and engineering contexts, for example in statistical process control , in exploration geophysics , in genetics , and in biophysics. For 2D signals, the related problem of edge detection has been studied intensively for image processing.