title: Canny Edge Image - Noise removal
body: <p>I have a Canny edge detected image of a ball (see link below) which contains a lot of noisy edges.  What are the best image processing techniques that I can use to remove these noisy edges without removing the edges belonging to the ball?</p>
  
  <p>Original image</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/d8S4G.png" alt="original"></p>
  
  <p>Canny edge image</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/5u8o8.png" alt="canny"></p>
  
  <p>Many thanks everyone in advance for your help and advice, much appreciated!</p>
  
  <p>Ps I am trying to clean up the edge image prior to using the Circle Hough Transform to detect the ball.</p>