I have surface data Z over an [X,Y] mesh. In general Z = 0, but there will be peaks which stick up above this flat background, and these peaks will have roughly elliptical cross sections. These are diffraction intensity peaks, if anyone is curious. I would like to measure the elliptical cross section at about half the peak's maximum value.
So typically with diffraction, if it's a peak y = f(x), we want to look at the Full Width at Half Max (FWHM), which can be done by finding the peak's maximum, then intersecting the peak at that value and measuring the width. No problem.
Here I want to perform the analogous operation, but at higher dimension. If the peak had a circular cross section, then I could just do the FWHM = diameter of cross section. However, these peaks are elliptical, so I want to slice the peak at its half max and then fit an ellipse to the cross section. That way I can get the major and minor axes, inclination angle, and goodness of fit, all of which contain relevant information that a simple FWHM number would not provide.
I can hack together a way to do this, but it's slow and messy, so it feels like there must be a better way to do this. So my question really just comes down to, has anyone done this kind of problem before, and if so, are there any modules that I could use to perform the calculation quickly and with a simple, clean code?
I need to draw a plot of a function that I know its analytic form. For example, y=exp(-x^2/2).
If I plot this function over an interval of [-5,5] with 11 points, I get the blue curve below. Notice how lines connecting points are linearly interpolated, making an incorrect representation of the function. If I use more points, I could get more accurate plot like the yellow curve below. On the other hand, if I use cubic spline then the curve seems more realistic even if the sampling rate is low (green curve).
This is not a problem in most cases, but if I want a vector output like svg or pdf, I'd love to reduce the number of points as low as possible to minimize the size of output. So, I'd like to see if there is any option in matplotlib or any other python-based plotting library that can either connect the dots using spline, or specify the slope and curvature at each point (similar to Photoshop or MS Powerpoint).
I've been tasked to develop an algorithm that, given a set of sparse points representing measurements of an existing surface, would allow us to compute the z coordinate of any point on the surface. The challenge is to find a suitable interpolation method that can recreate the 3D surface given only a few points and extrapolate values also outside of the range containing the initial measurements (a notorious problem for many interpolation methods).
After trying to fit many analytic curves to the points I've decided to use RBF interpolation as I thought this will better reproduce the surface given that the points should all lie on it (I'm assuming the measurements have a negligible error).
The first results are quite impressive considering the few points that I'm using.
Interpolation results
In the picture that I'm showing the blue points are the ones used for the RBF interpolation which produces the shape represented in gray scale. The red points are instead additional measurements of the same shape that I'm trying to reproduce with my interpolation algorithm.
Unfortunately there are some outliers, especially when I'm trying to extrapolate points outside of the area where the initial measurements were taken (you can see this in the upper right and lower center insets in the picture). This is to be expected, especially in RBF methods, as I'm trying to extract information from an area that initially does not have any.
Apparently the RBF interpolation is trying to flatten out the surface while I would just need to continue with the curvature of the shape. Of course the method does not know anything about that given how it is defined. However this causes a large discrepancy from the measurements that I'm trying to fit.
That's why I'm asking if there is any way to constrain the interpolation method to keep the curvature or use a different radial basis function that doesn't smooth out so quickly only on the border of the interpolation range. I've tried different combination of the epsilon parameters and distance functions without luck. This is what I'm using right now:
from scipy import interpolate
import numpy as np
spline = interpolate.Rbf(df.X.values, df.Y.values, df.Z.values,
function='thin_plate')
X,Y = np.meshgrid(np.linspace(xmin.round(), xmax.round(), precision),
np.linspace(ymin.round(), ymax.round(), precision))
Z = spline(X, Y)
I was also thinking of creating some additional dummy points outside of the interpolation range to constrain the model even more, but that would be quite complicated.
I'm also attaching an animation to give a better idea of the surface.
Animation
Just wanted to post my solution in case someone has the same problem. The issue was indeed with scipy implementation of the RBF interpolation. I tried instead to adopt a more flexible library, https://rbf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html#.
The results are pretty cool! Using the following options
from rbf.interpolate import RBFInterpolant
spline = RBFInterpolant(X_obs, U_obs, phi='phs5', order=1, sigma=0.0, eps=1.)
I was able to get the right shape even at the edge.
Surface interpolation
I've played around with the different phi functions and here is the boxplot of the spread between the interpolated surface and the points that I'm testing the interpolation against (the red points in the picture).
Boxplot
With phs5 I get the best result with an average spread of about 0.5 mm on the upper surface and 0.8 on the lower surface. Before I was getting a similar average but with many outliers > 15 mm. Definitely a success :)
I'm working on a heatmap generation program which hopefully will fill in the colors based on value samples provided from a building layout (this is not GPS based).
If I have only a few known data points such as these in a large matrix of unknowns, how do I get the values in between interpolated in Python?:
0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,5,0,0,0,0,9
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
0,0,0,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,8,0,0,0
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
0,8,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,6,0,0,0,0,0,0
0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,7,0
I understand that bilinear won't do it, and Gaussian will bring all the peaks down to low values due to the sheer number of surrounding zeros. This is obviously a matrix handling proposition, and I don't need it to be Bezier curve smooth, just close enough to be a graphic representation would be fine. My matrix will end up being about 1500×900 cells in size, with approximately 100 known points.
Once the values are interpolated, I have written code to convert it all to colors, no problem. It's just that right now I'm getting single colored pixels sprinkled over a black background.
Proposing a naive solution:
Step 1: interpolate and extrapolate existing data points onto surroundings.
This can be done using "wave propagation" type algorithm.
The known points "spread out" their values onto surroundings until all the grid is "flooded" with some known values. At the end of this stage you have a number of intersected "disks", and no zeroes left.
Step 2: smoothen the result (using bilinear filtering or some other filtering).
If you are able to use ScyPy, then interp2d does exactly what you want. A possible problem with is that it seems to not extrapolate smoothly according to this issue. This means that all values near the walls are going to be the same as closest their neighbour points. This can be solved by putting thermometers in all 4 corners :)
I'm referencing this question and this documentation in trying to turn a set of points (the purple dots in the image below) into an interpolated grid.
As you can see, the image has missing spots where dots should be. I'd like to figure out where those are.
import numpy as np
from scipy import interpolate
CIRCLES_X = 25 # There should be 25 circles going across
CIRCLES_Y = 10 # There should be 10 circles going down
points = []
values = []
# Points range from 0-800 ish X, 0-300 ish Y
for point in points:
points.append([points.x, points.y])
values.append(1) # Not sure what this should be
grid_x, grid_y = np.mgrid[0:CIRCLES_Y, 0:CIRCLES_X]
grid = interpolate.griddata(points, values, (grid_x, grid_y), method='linear')
print(grid)
Whenever I print out the result of the grid, I get nan for all of my values.
Where am I going wrong? Is my problem even the correct use case for interpolate.grid?
First, your uncertain points are mainly at an edge, so it's actually extrapolation. Second, interpolation methods built into scipy deal with continuous functions defined on the entire plane and approximate it as a polynomial. While yours is discrete (1 or 0), somewhat periodic rather than polynomial and only defined in a discrete "grid" of points.
So you have to invent some algorithm to inter/extrapolate your specific kind of function. Whether you'll be able to reuse an existing one - from scipy or elsewhere - is up to you.
One possible way is to replace it with some function (continuous or not) defined everywhere, then calculate that approximation in the missing points - whether as one step as scipy.interpolate non-class functions do or as two separate steps.
e.g. you can use a 3-D parabola with peaks in your dots and troughs exactly between them. Or just with ones in the dots and 0's in the blanks and hope the resulting approximation in the grid's points is good enough to give a meaningful result (random overswings are likely). Then you can use scipy.interpolate.RegularGridInterpolator for both inter- and extrapolation.
or as a harmonic function - then what you're seeking is Fourier transformation
Another possible way is to go straight for a discrete solution rather than try to shoehorn the continual mathanalysis' methods into your case: design a (probably entirely custom) algorithm that'll try to figure out the "shape" and "dimensions" of your "grids of dots" and then simply fill in the blanks. I'm not sure if it is possible to add it into the scipy.interpolate's harness as a selectable algorithm in addition to the built-in ones.
And last but not the least. You didn't specify whether the "missing" points are points where the value is unknown or are actual part of the data - i.e. are incorrect data. If it's the latter, simple interpolation is not applicable at all as it assumes that all the data are strictly correct. Then it's a related but different problem: you can approximate the data but then have to somehow "throw away irregularities" (higher order of smallness entities after some point).