Fitting concentric elliptical shapes under general model

Fitting concentric ellipses is a crucial yet challenging task in image processing, pattern recognition, and astronomy. To address this complexity, researchers have introduced simplified models by imposing geometric assumptions. These assumptions enable the linearization of the model through reparameterization, allowing for the extension of various fitting methods. However, these restrictive assumptions often fail to hold in real-world scenarios, limiting their practical applicability. In this work, we propose two novel estimators that relax these assumptions: the Least Squares method (LS) and the Gradient Algebraic Fit (GRAF). Since these methods are iterative, we provide numerical implementations and strategies for obtaining reliable initial guesses. Moreover, we employ perturbation theory to conduct a first-order analysis, deriving the leading terms of their Mean Squared Errors and their theoretical lower bounds. Our theoretical findings reveal that the GRAF is statistically efficient, while the LS method is not. We further validate our theoretical results and the performance of the proposed estimators through a series of numerical experiments on both real and synthetic data.