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OpenCV Segmentation of Largest contour in Breast Mammograms

This might be a bit too "general" question, but how do I perform GRAYSCALE image segmentation and keep the largest contour? I am trying to remove background noise (i.e. labels) from breast mammograms, but I am not successful. Here is the original image:
First, I applied AGCWD algorithm (based on paper "Efficient Contrast Enhancement Using Adaptive Gamma Correction With Weighting Distribution") in order to get better contrast of the image pixels, like so:
Afterwards, I tried executing following steps:
Image segmentation using OpenCV's KMeans clustering algorithm:
enhanced_image_cpy = enhanced_image.copy()
reshaped_image = np.float32(enhanced_image_cpy.reshape(-1, 1))
number_of_clusters = 10
stop_criteria = (cv2.TERM_CRITERIA_EPS + cv2.TERM_CRITERIA_MAX_ITER, 100, 0.1)
ret, labels, clusters = cv2.kmeans(reshaped_image, number_of_clusters, None, stop_criteria, 10, cv2.KMEANS_RANDOM_CENTERS)
clusters = np.uint8(clusters)
Canny Edge Detection:
removed_cluster = 1
canny_image = np.copy(enhanced_image_cpy).reshape((-1, 1))
canny_image[labels.flatten() == removed_cluster] = [0]
canny_image = cv2.Canny(canny_image,100,200).reshape(enhanced_image_cpy.shape)
show_images([canny_image])
Find and Draw Contours:
initial_contours_image = np.copy(canny_image)
initial_contours_image_bgr = cv2.cvtColor(initial_contours_image, cv2.COLOR_GRAY2BGR)
_, thresh = cv2.threshold(initial_contours_image, 50, 255, 0)
contours, hierarchy = cv2.findContours(thresh, cv2.RETR_TREE, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
cv2.drawContours(initial_contours_image_bgr, contours, -1, (255,0,0), cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
show_images([initial_contours_image_bgr])
Here is how image looks after I draw 44004 contours:
I am not sure how can I get one BIG contour, instead of 44004 small ones. Any ideas how to fix my approach, or possibly any ideas on using alternative approach to get rid of label in top right corner.
Thanks in advance!

Here is one way to do that in Python OpenCV
Read the image
Threshold and invert so the borders are black
Remove the borders of the image as follows (so as to make it easier to get the relevant contours later):
Count the number of non-zero pixels in each column and find the first and last column that have counts greater than 0
Count the number of non-zero pixels in each row and find the first and last row that have counts greater than 0
Crop the image to remove the borders
Crop thresh1 and invert to make thresh2
Get the external contours from thresh2
Find the largest contour and draw as white filled on a black background as a mask
Make all pixels in the cropped image black where the mask is black
Save the results -
Input:
import cv2
import numpy as np
# read image
img = cv2.imread('xray3.png')
# convert to gray
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
# threshold and invert
thresh1 = cv2.threshold(gray, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)[1]
thresh1 = 255 - thresh1
# remove borders
# count number of white pixels in columns as new 1D array
count_cols = np.count_nonzero(thresh1, axis=0)
# get first and last x coordinate where black
first_x = np.where(count_cols>0)[0][0]
last_x = np.where(count_cols>0)[0][-1]
print(first_x,last_x)
# count number of white pixels in rows as new 1D array
count_rows = np.count_nonzero(thresh1, axis=1)
# get first and last y coordinate where black
first_y = np.where(count_rows>0)[0][0]
last_y = np.where(count_rows>0)[0][-1]
print(first_y,last_y)
# crop image
crop = img[first_y:last_y+1, first_x:last_x+1]
# crop thresh1 and invert
thresh2 = thresh1[first_y:last_y+1, first_x:last_x+1]
thresh2 = 255 - thresh2
# get external contours and keep largest one
contours = cv2.findContours(thresh2, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
contours = contours[0] if len(contours) == 2 else contours[1]
big_contour = max(contours, key=cv2.contourArea)
# make mask from contour
mask = np.zeros_like(thresh2 , dtype=np.uint8)
cv2.drawContours(mask, [big_contour], 0, 255, -1)
# make crop black everywhere except where largest contour is white in mask
result = crop.copy()
result[mask==0] = (0,0,0)
# write result to disk
cv2.imwrite("xray3_thresh1.jpg", thresh1)
cv2.imwrite("xray3_crop.jpg", crop)
cv2.imwrite("xray3_thresh2.jpg", thresh2)
cv2.imwrite("xray3_mask.jpg", mask)
cv2.imwrite("xray3_result.png", result)
# display it
cv2.imshow("thresh1", thresh1)
cv2.imshow("crop", crop)
cv2.imshow("thresh2", thresh2)
cv2.imshow("mask", mask)
cv2.imshow("result", result)
cv2.waitKey(0)
Threshold 1 image:
Cropped image:
Threshold 2 image:
Mask image:
Result:

Is there a recommended methodology to determine minRadius for finding the 1 circle in an image if using OpenCV's HoughCircles?

I need to figure out the best way to choose a minRadius value for use in the OpenCV cv2.HoughCircles function.
I am working on increasing the accuracy of a Tensorflow CNN that does US rare coin classification. Currently, the CNN is reviewing >10k images of all different sizes from 300x300 to 1024x1024
To increase the accuracy of the model, I am attempting to pull the coin out of the image prior to training, and only train the model on the coin and not its surroundings.
The below code works OK in detecting the coin as a circle but I have to try several minRadius values to get the HoughCircles function to work well.
In some cases, minRadius=270 works on a 600x600 and a 785x1024 and in other cases only r=200 works for a 600x600 but fails on the 785x1024. In other cases only r=318 works but not 317 or 319. I've not found a consistent approach.
Question: Is there a recommended methodology to determine minRadius for finding the 1 circle in an image? assuming the image is of different sizes and the coin is taking up from 50% to 90% of the image
here are examples of typical images: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/r5oAAOSwH8VeHNBf/s-l1600.jpg
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/~JsAAOSwGtdeyFfU/s-l1600.jpg
image = cv2.imread(r"C:\testimages\70a.jpg")
output = image.copy()
height, width = image.shape[:2]
minRadius = 200
maxRadius =0
gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
circles = cv2.HoughCircles(image=gray,
method=cv2.HOUGH_GRADIENT,
dp=1.2,
minDist=200*minRadius, #something large since we are looking for 1
param1=200,
param2=100,
minRadius=minRadius,
maxRadius=maxRadius
)
#Draw the circles detected
if circles is not None:
# convert the (x, y) coordinates and radius of the circles to integers
circlesRound = np.round(circles[0, :]).astype("int")
# loop over the (x, y) coordinates and radius of the circles
for (x, y, r) in circlesRound:
cv2.circle(output, (x, y), r, (0, 255, 0), 4)
plt.imshow(output)
else:
print ('No circles found')

Here is a different way to do that by fitting an ellipse to the largest contour extracted from the thresholded image. You can use the ellipse major and minor radii as approximations for your Hough Circles if you want.
Input:
import cv2
import numpy as np
# read input
img = cv2.imread('s-l1600.jpg')
# convert to gray
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
# threshold
thresh = cv2.threshold(gray, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV + cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]
# apply morphology open and close
kernel = cv2.getStructuringElement(cv2.MORPH_ELLIPSE, (5,5))
morph = cv2.morphologyEx(thresh, cv2.MORPH_OPEN, kernel)
kernel = cv2.getStructuringElement(cv2.MORPH_ELLIPSE, (21,21))
morph = cv2.morphologyEx(morph, cv2.MORPH_CLOSE, kernel)
# find largest contour
contours = cv2.findContours(morph, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
contours = contours[0] if len(contours) == 2 else contours[1]
big_contour = max(contours, key=cv2.contourArea)
# fit ellipse to contour and get ellipse center, minor and major diameters and angle in degree
ellipse = cv2.fitEllipse(big_contour)
(xc,yc),(d1,d2),angle = ellipse
print('center: ',xc,',',yc)
print('diameters: ',d1,',',d2)
# draw ellipse
result = img.copy()
cv2.ellipse(result, ellipse, (0, 0, 255), 2)
# draw circle at center
xc, yc = ellipse[0]
cv2.circle(result, (int(xc),int(yc)), 5, (0, 255, 0), -1)
cv2.imwrite("s-l1600_thresh.jpg", thresh)
cv2.imwrite("s-l1600_morph.jpg", morph)
cv2.imwrite("s-l1600_ellipse.jpg", result)
cv2.imshow("s-l1600_thresh", thresh)
cv2.imshow("s-l1600_morph", morph)
cv2.imshow("s-l1600_ellipse", result)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
Otsu thresholded image:
Cleaned threshold image:
Ellipse draw from contour fitting on input showing ellipse outline and center:
Ellipse parameters:
center: 504.1853332519531 , 524.3350219726562
diameters: 953.078125 , 990.545654296875
Here is your other image. But here I use color thresholding using inRange().
Input:
import cv2
import numpy as np
# read input
img = cv2.imread('s-l1600b.jpg')
# convert to hsv
hsv = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2HSV)
# get color bounds of red circle
lower =(0,0,0) # lower bound for each channel
upper = (150,150,150) # upper bound for each channel
# create the mask and use it to change the colors
thresh = cv2.inRange(hsv, lower, upper)
# apply morphology open and close
kernel = cv2.getStructuringElement(cv2.MORPH_ELLIPSE, (3,3))
morph = cv2.morphologyEx(thresh, cv2.MORPH_OPEN, kernel)
kernel = cv2.getStructuringElement(cv2.MORPH_ELLIPSE, (31,31))
morph = cv2.morphologyEx(morph, cv2.MORPH_CLOSE, kernel)
# find largest contour
contours = cv2.findContours(morph, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
contours = contours[0] if len(contours) == 2 else contours[1]
big_contour = max(contours, key=cv2.contourArea)
# fit ellipse to contour and get ellipse center, minor and major diameters and angle in degree
ellipse = cv2.fitEllipse(big_contour)
(xc,yc),(d1,d2),angle = ellipse
print('center: ',xc,',',yc)
print('diameters: ',d1,',',d2)
# draw ellipse
result = img.copy()
cv2.ellipse(result, ellipse, (0, 0, 255), 2)
# draw circle at center
xc, yc = ellipse[0]
cv2.circle(result, (int(xc),int(yc)), 5, (0, 255, 0), -1)
cv2.imwrite("s-l1600_thresh.jpg", thresh)
cv2.imwrite("s-l1600_morph.jpg", morph)
cv2.imwrite("s-l1600_ellipse.jpg", result)
cv2.imshow("s-l1600b_thresh", thresh)
cv2.imshow("s-l1600b_morph", morph)
cv2.imshow("s-l1600b_ellipse", result)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
Thresholded image:
Morphology cleaned image:
Largest external contour fitted to ellipse and drawn on input:
Ellipse parameters:
center: 497.53564453125 , 639.7144165039062
diameters: 454.8548583984375 , 458.95843505859375

How to detect text on an X-Ray image with OpenCV

I want to detect text on x-ray images. The goal is to extract the oriented bounding boxes as a matrix where each row is a detected bounding box and each row contains the coordinates of all four edges i.e. [x1, x2, y1, y2]. I'm using python 3 and OpenCV 4.2.0.
Here is a sample image:
The string "test word", "a" and "b" should be detected.
I followed this OpenCV tutorial about creating rotated boxes for contours and this stackoverflow answer about detecting a text area in an image.
The resulting boundary boxes should look something like this:
I was able to detect the text, but the result included a lot of boxes without text.
Here is what I tried so far:
img = cv2.imread(file_name)
## Open the image, convert it into grayscale and blur it to get rid of the noise.
img2gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_RGB2GRAY)
ret, mask = cv2.threshold(img2gray, 180, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
image_final = cv2.bitwise_and(img2gray, img2gray, mask=mask)
ret, new_img = cv2.threshold(image_final, 180, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY) # for black text , cv.THRESH_BINARY_INV
kernel = cv2.getStructuringElement(cv2.MORPH_CROSS, (3, 3))
dilated = cv2.dilate(new_img, kernel, iterations=6)
canny_output = cv2.Canny(dilated, 100, 100 * 2)
cv2.imshow('Canny', canny_output)
## Finds contours and saves them to the vectors contour and hierarchy.
contours, hierarchy = cv2.findContours(canny_output, cv2.RETR_TREE, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
# Find the rotated rectangles and ellipses for each contour
minRect = [None] * len(contours)
for i, c in enumerate(contours):
minRect[i] = cv2.minAreaRect(c)
# Draw contours + rotated rects + ellipses
drawing = np.zeros((canny_output.shape[0], canny_output.shape[1], 3), dtype=np.uint8)
for i, c in enumerate(contours):
color = (255, 0, 255)
# contour
cv2.drawContours(drawing, contours, i, color)
# rotated rectangle
box = cv2.boxPoints(minRect[i])
box = np.intp(box) # np.intp: Integer used for indexing (same as C ssize_t; normally either int32 or int64)
cv2.drawContours(img, [box], 0, color)
cv2.imshow('Result', img)
cv2.waitKey()
Do I need to run the results through OCR to make sure whether it is text or not? What other approaches should I try?
PS: I'm quite new to computer vision and not familiar with most concepts yet.

Here's a simple approach:
Obtain binary image. Load image, create blank mask, convert to grayscale, Gaussian blur, then Otsu's threshold
Merge text into a single contour. Since we want to extract the text as one piece, we perform morphological operations to connect individual text contours into a single contour.
Extract text. We find contours then filter using contour area with cv2.contourArea and aspect ratio using cv2.arcLength + cv2.approxPolyDP. If a contour passes the filter, we find the rotated bounding box and draw this onto our mask.
Isolate text. We perform an cv2.bitwise_and operation to extract the text.
Here's a visualization of the process. Using this screenshotted input image (since your provided input image was connected as one image):
Input image -> Binary image
Morph close -> Detected text
Isolated text
Results with the other image
Input image -> Binary image + morph close
Detected text -> Isolated text
Code
import cv2
import numpy as np
# Load image, create mask, grayscale, Gaussian blur, Otsu's threshold
image = cv2.imread('1.png')
original = image.copy()
blank = np.zeros(image.shape[:2], dtype=np.uint8)
gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
blur = cv2.GaussianBlur(gray, (5,5), 0)
thresh = cv2.threshold(blur, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY + cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]
# Merge text into a single contour
kernel = cv2.getStructuringElement(cv2.MORPH_RECT, (5,5))
close = cv2.morphologyEx(thresh, cv2.MORPH_CLOSE, kernel, iterations=3)
# Find contours
cnts = cv2.findContours(close, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
cnts = cnts[0] if len(cnts) == 2 else cnts[1]
for c in cnts:
# Filter using contour area and aspect ratio
x,y,w,h = cv2.boundingRect(c)
area = cv2.contourArea(c)
ar = w / float(h)
if (ar > 1.4 and ar < 4) or ar < .85 and area > 10 and area < 500:
# Find rotated bounding box
rect = cv2.minAreaRect(c)
box = cv2.boxPoints(rect)
box = np.int0(box)
cv2.drawContours(image,[box],0,(36,255,12),2)
cv2.drawContours(blank,[box],0,(255,255,255),-1)
# Bitwise operations to isolate text
extract = cv2.bitwise_and(thresh, blank)
extract = cv2.bitwise_and(original, original, mask=extract)
cv2.imshow('thresh', thresh)
cv2.imshow('image', image)
cv2.imshow('close', close)
cv2.imshow('extract', extract)
cv2.waitKey()

I removed the text using the following comand (after the code of above):
gray2 = cv2.cvtColor(extract, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
blur2 = cv2.GaussianBlur(gray2, (5,5), 0)
thresh2 = cv2.threshold(blur2, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)[1]
test = cv2.inpaint(original, thresh2, 7, cv2.INPAINT_TELEA)

How to find accurate corner positions of a distorted rectangle from blurry image in python?

I am looking for a procedure to detect the corners of an distorted rectangle accurately with OpenCV in Python.
I've tried the solution of different suggestions by googling, but through a sinusoidal superposition of a straight line (see the thresholded image) I probably can't detect the corners. I tried findContours and HoughLines so far without good results.
Unfortunately I don't understand the C-Code from Xu Bin in how to find blur corner position with opencv?
This is my initial image:
After resizing and thresholding I apply canny edge detection to get following image:
contours, hierarchy = cv2.findContours(g_mask, cv2.RETR_TREE, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
box = cv2.minAreaRect(contour)
box = cv2.cv.BoxPoints(box) if imutils.is_cv2() else cv2.boxPoints(box)
box = np.array(box, dtype="float")
box = perspective.order_points(box)
I only get the following result with some extra drawing:
I thought line fitting would be a good way to solve the problem, but unfortunately I couldn't get HoughLines working and after looking in OpenCV Python - How to implement RANSAC to detect straight lines? RANSAC seems also difficult to apply for my problem.
Any help is highly appreciated.

Though this is old, this can at least help any others who have the same issue. In addition to nathancy's answer, this should allow you to find the very blurry corners with much more accuracy:
Pseudo Code
Resize if desired, not necessary though
Convert to grayscale
Apply blurring or bilateral filtering
Apply Otsu's threshold to get a binary image
Find contour that makes up rectangle
Approximate contour as a rectangle
Points of approximation are your rectangle's corners!
Code to do so
Resize:
The function takes the new width and height, so I am just making the image 5 times bigger than it currently is.
img = cv2.resize(img, (img.shape[0] * 5, img.shape[1] * 5))
Grayscale conversion:
Just converting to grayscale from OpenCV's default BGR colorspace.
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
Blurring/bilateral filtering:
You could use any number of techniques to soften up this image further, if needed. Maybe a Gaussian blur, or, as nathancy suggested, a bilateral filter, but no need for both.
# choose one, or a different function
blurred = cv2.GaussianBlur(gray, (5, 5), 0)
blurred = cv2.bilateralFilter(gray, 9, 75, 75)
Otsu's threshold
Using the threshold function, pass 0 and 255 as the arguments for the threshold value and the max value. We pass 0 in because we are using the thresholding technique cv2.THRESH_OTSU which determines the value for us. This is returned along with the threshold itself, but I just set it to _ because we don't need it.
_, thresh = cv2.threshold(blurred, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_OTSU)
Finding contour
There is a lot more to contours than I will explain here, feel free to checkout docs.
The important things to know for us is that it returns a list of contours along with a hierarchy. We don't need the hierarchy so it is set to _, and we only need the single contour it finds, so we set contour = contours[0].
contours, _ = cv2.findContours(thresh, cv2.RETR_TREE, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
contour = contours[0]
Approximate contour as a rectangle
First we calculate the perimeter of the contour. Then we approximate it with the cv2.approxPolyDP function, and tell it the maximum distance between the original curve and its approximation with the 0.05 * perimeter. You may need to play around with the decimal for a better approximation.
The approx is a numpy array with shape (num_points, 1, 2), which in this case is (4, 1, 2) because it found the 4 corners of the rectangle.
Feel free to read up more in the docs.
perimeter = cv2.arcLength(contour, True)
approx = cv2.approxPolyDP(contour, 0.05 * perimeter, True)
Find your skewed rectangle!
You're already done! Here's just how you could draw those points. First we draw the circles by looping over them then grabbing the x and y coordinates, and then we draw the rectangle itself.
# drawing points
for point in approx:
x, y = point[0]
cv2.circle(img, (x, y), 3, (0, 255, 0), -1)
# drawing skewed rectangle
cv2.drawContours(img, [approx], -1, (0, 255, 0))
Finished Code
import cv2
img = cv2.imread("rect.png")
img = cv2.resize(img, (img.shape[0] * 5, img.shape[1] * 5))
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
blurred = cv2.bilateralFilter(gray, 9, 75, 75)
_, thresh = cv2.threshold(blurred, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_OTSU)
contours, _ = cv2.findContours(thresh, cv2.RETR_TREE, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
contour = contours[0]
perimeter = cv2.arcLength(contour, True)
approx = cv2.approxPolyDP(contour, 0.05 * perimeter, True)
for point in approx:
x, y = point[0]
cv2.circle(img, (x, y), 3, (0, 255, 0), -1)
cv2.drawContours(img, [approx], -1, (0, 255, 0))

To detect corners, you can use cv2.goodFeaturesToTrack(). The function takes four parameters
corners = cv2.goodFeaturesToTrack(image, maxCorners, qualityLevel, minDistance)
image - Input 8-bit or floating-point 32-bit grayscale single-channel image
maxCorners - Maximum number of corners to return
qualityLevel - Minimum accepted quality level of corners between 0-1. All corners below quality level are rejected
minDistance - Minimum possible Euclidean distance between corners
Now that we know how to find corners, we have to find the rotated rectangle and apply the function. Here's an approach:
We first enlarge the image, convert to grayscale, apply a bilateral filter, then Otsu's threshold to get a binary image
Next we find the distorted rectangle by finding contours with cv2.findContours() then obtain the rotated bounding box highlighted in green. We draw this bounding box onto a mask
Now that we have the mask, we simply use cv2.goodFeaturesToTrack() to find the corners on the mask
Here's the result on the original input image and the (x, y) coordinates for each corner
Corner points
(377.0, 375.0)
(81.0, 344.0)
(400.0, 158.0)
(104.0, 127.0)
Code
import cv2
import numpy as np
import imutils
# Resize image, blur, and Otsu's threshold
image = cv2.imread('1.png')
resize = imutils.resize(image, width=500)
mask = np.zeros(resize.shape, dtype=np.uint8)
gray = cv2.cvtColor(resize, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
blur = cv2.bilateralFilter(gray,9,75,75)
thresh = cv2.threshold(blur, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY + cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]
# Find distorted rectangle contour and draw onto a mask
cnts = cv2.findContours(thresh, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
cnts = cnts[0] if len(cnts) == 2 else cnts[1]
rect = cv2.minAreaRect(cnts[0])
box = cv2.boxPoints(rect)
box = np.int0(box)
cv2.drawContours(resize,[box],0,(36,255,12),2)
cv2.fillPoly(mask, [box], (255,255,255))
# Find corners on the mask
mask = cv2.cvtColor(mask, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
corners = cv2.goodFeaturesToTrack(mask, maxCorners=4, qualityLevel=0.5, minDistance=150)
for corner in corners:
x,y = corner.ravel()
cv2.circle(resize,(x,y),8,(155,20,255),-1)
print("({}, {})".format(x,y))
cv2.imshow('resize', resize)
cv2.imshow('thresh', thresh)
cv2.imshow('mask', mask)
cv2.waitKey()

How to use watershed segmentation in opencv python

I have a problem of how to segment the particles individually in this image using watershed segmentation in python .. My main goal is to remove noise by applying filter medianBlur then applying Canny edge detection method .
[![img = cv2.imread('sands.jpg')
img = cv2.medianBlur(img,7)
img = cv2.cvtColor(img,cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
imo = cv2.Canny(img,140,255)][1]][1]
I would like to enhance the contours resulted from the Canny edge detection function as I use this images in detecting the region properties of particles within the image to estimate area .

Here's an approach adapted from this blog post
Convert image to grayscale
Otsu's threshold to obtain a binary image
Compute Euclidean Distance Transform
Perform connected component analysis
Apply watershed
Iterate through label values and extract objects
Here's the results
While iterating through each contour, you can accumulate the total area
1388903.5
import cv2
import numpy as np
from skimage.feature import peak_local_max
from skimage.morphology import watershed
from scipy import ndimage
# Load in image, convert to gray scale, and Otsu's threshold
image = cv2.imread('1.jpg')
gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
thresh = cv2.threshold(gray, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY + cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]
# Compute Euclidean distance from every binary pixel
# to the nearest zero pixel then find peaks
distance_map = ndimage.distance_transform_edt(thresh)
local_max = peak_local_max(distance_map, indices=False, min_distance=20, labels=thresh)
# Perform connected component analysis then apply Watershed
markers = ndimage.label(local_max, structure=np.ones((3, 3)))[0]
labels = watershed(-distance_map, markers, mask=thresh)
# Iterate through unique labels
total_area = 0
for label in np.unique(labels):
if label == 0:
continue
# Create a mask
mask = np.zeros(gray.shape, dtype="uint8")
mask[labels == label] = 255
# Find contours and determine contour area
cnts = cv2.findContours(mask.copy(), cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
cnts = cnts[0] if len(cnts) == 2 else cnts[1]
c = max(cnts, key=cv2.contourArea)
area = cv2.contourArea(c)
total_area += area
cv2.drawContours(image, [c], -1, (36,255,12), 4)
print(total_area)
cv2.imshow('image', image)
cv2.waitKey()