Develop Reference

Recognizing black and white images with OpenCV

I have this set of images :
The leftmost one is the reference image.
I want to have a value telling me how close is any of the other images to the leftmost one.
I experimented with matchShapes(), by calling it for each contour and averaging the values, but I didn't get useful result (the rightmost one had a too high value, for example)
I would also want the matching to work only in the correct orientation.

If they're purely black and white images it would probably be easier to just AND the two pictures together and sum up the total pixels left in the result.
Something like this:
import cv2
import numpy as np
x = np.zeros((100,100))
y = np.zeros((100,100))
for i in range(25,75):
x[i][i] = 255
y[i][100-i] = 255
cv2.imshow('x', x)
cv2.imshow('y', y)
z = cv2.bitwise_and(x,y)
sum = 0
for i in range(0,z.shape[0]):
for j in range(0,z.shape[1]):
if z[i][j] == 255:
sum += 1
print(f"Similarity Score: {sum}")
cv2.imshow('z',z)
cv2.waitKey(0)
There probably exists some better library to perform this all in one line but if performance isn't much of a concern perhaps this could work.

It was difficult to not recognize images that were too different. With the methods proposed here, I always got really close values for images that I thought were too different to correspond.
In the end, I did a multistep process:
First I got the contour of the test image like so :
testContours, _ = cv.findContours(testImage, cv.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
Then, if the contour count between the test image and the original image are not the same, I abort.
If they have the same contour count, I then calculate the average between all shape distances of the contours :
distances = []
sd = cv2.createShapeContextDistanceExtractor()
for i in range(len(testContours)):
d2 = sd.computeDistance(testContours[i], originalContours[i])
distances.append(d2)
value = sum(distances) / len(distances)
Then, I count the number of white pixels after AND-ing the two images, divided by the total number of pixels in the source image (in case the contours match but are not placed correctly)
exactly_placed_ratio = cv.countNonZero(cv.bitwise_and(testImage, originalImage)) / cv.countNonZero(originalImage)
In the end I have two values, I can use the first one to check if the shapes are close enough, and the second one to check if they are in the right position relative to the whole image.

I am trying to crop an image to remove extra space in python

This may sound confusing but I will demonstrate what my goal is. I want to crop the extra space around a image using python. You can see in image two the outside border is cropped off until it cuts out the extra space around the colored bars in the center. I am not sure if this is possible. Sorry for the vague question as it is very hard to explain what I am trying to do.
(Before) Image Before Cropping ----------> (After) What I am trying to achieve.
You can notice the extra black space around the colored thing in the center is cutout on the after image.
I want to be able to cut the extra space out without me manually typing in where to crop out. How could this be done?

Sure!
With a bit of Pillow and Numpy magic, you can do something like this – not sure if this is optimal, since I whipped it up in about 15 minutes and I'm not the Numpyiest of Numpyistas:
from PIL import Image
import numpy as np
def get_first_last(mask, axis: int):
""" Find the first and last index of non-zero values along an axis in `mask` """
mask_axis = np.argmax(mask, axis=axis) > 0
a = np.argmax(mask_axis)
b = len(mask_axis) - np.argmax(mask_axis[::-1])
return int(a), int(b)
def crop_borders(img, crop_color):
np_img = np.array(img)
mask = (np_img != crop_color)[..., 0] # compute a mask
x0, x1 = get_first_last(mask, 0) # find boundaries along x axis
y0, y1 = get_first_last(mask, 1) # find boundaries along y axis
return img.crop((x0, y0, x1, y1))
def main():
img = Image.open("0d34A.png").convert("RGB")
img = crop_borders(img, crop_color=(0, 0, 0))
img.save("0d34A_cropped.png")
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
If you need a different condition (e.g. all pixels dark enough, you can change how mask is defined.

As I understand, your problem is how to identify extra space, rather than which library/framework/tool to use to edit images. If so, then I've solved a similar problem about 4 years ago. I'm sorry, I don't have sample code to show (I left that organisation); but the logic was as follows:
Decide a colour for background. Never use this colour in any of the bars in the graph/image.
Read image data as RGB matrices (3 x 2D-array).
Repeat following on first row, last row, first column, last column:
Simultaneously iterate all 3 matrices
If all values in the row or column from index=0 to index=len(row or column) are equal to corresponding background colour RGB component, then this is extra space. Remove this row or column from all RGB matrices.
Write the remaining RGB matrices as image.
Following are some helpful links in this regard:
Read image as RGB matrix
Iterating through RGB matrices
Write RGB matrix as image

How to remove moving objects to obtain background only?

I'm practically new to python and don't have much knowledge about it. I need help converting this pseudocode into Python which is written to obtain the background by removing moving objects in the images. In regards to the Pseudocode, I don't understand the Lines 3, 4 and 5 so maybe once its converted into Python, I can understand it better. In line 3 and 4, I don't understand what the & does and in the last line, I don't understand how is it even computing an image.
Any help will be appreciated.
The code is provided below:
Mat sequence[3];// the sequence of images to loop through
Mat output, x = 0, y = 0; // looping through the sequence
matchTemplate(sequence[i], sequence[i+1], output, CV_TM_CCOEFF_NORMED)
mask = 1 & (output>0.9) // get correlated part amongst the images
x += sequence[i] & mask + sequence[i+1] & mask; // accumulate background infer
y += 2*mask; // keep count
end of loop;
Mat bg = x.mul(1.0/y); // average background
Sample images to try are also provided below:
image1
image2
image3

I'm not very familiar with OpenCV, so I hope you'll excuse me if I don't provide a code snippet you can just copy and paste. But if I understand the pseudocode correctly, it is doing this:
sequence = list of images
x will hold sum of backgrounds
y will hold the number of frames use to build x
for each index i in sequence:
c = matrix of correlation coefficients between (sequence[i], sequence[i+1]) from matchTemplate
mask = pixels that are highly correlated (90%+)
x += actual pixels from sequence[i] & mask and sequence[i+1] & mask that are considered background
y += 2 for every pixel in mask
bg = average of background images x / number of frames y
So what's happening is, for every pair of images, it marks the pixels that are the same in both images. The assumption is that background doesn't change between adjacent frames and foreground does. Whether pixels are "the same" is judged on the basis of correlation being >90%. Then it takes all the marked pixels, and averages them.

As one of the commentors mentioned, the mean of the images does remove the foreground but the entire image becomes a little faded. Here is the code that does that:
import skimage.io as io
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
cim1 = io.imread('https://i.stack.imgur.com/P44wT.jpg')
cim2 = io.imread('https://i.stack.imgur.com/wU4Yt.jpg')
cim3 = io.imread('https://i.stack.imgur.com/yUbB6.jpg')
x,y,z = cim1.shape
newimage = np.copy(cim1)
for row in range(x-1):
for col in range(y-1):
r = np.mean([cim1[row][col][0],cim2[row][col][0],cim3[row][col][0]]).astype(int)
g = np.mean([cim1[row][col][1],cim2[row][col][1],cim3[row][col][1]]).astype(int)
b = np.mean([cim1[row][col][2],cim2[row][col][2],cim3[row][col][2]]).astype(int)
newimage[row][col] = [r,g,b]
fix, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10,10))
ax.axis('off')
ax.imshow(newimage)
The output image I get from this:
A better approach to this problem is to find the median of the three images. The more images you have in the algorithm the better is the background. Here is a snippet I tried (just replacing mean with median). If you have more images you can get a much more accurate one.
x,y,z = cim1.shape
newimage = np.copy(cim1)
for row in range(x-1):
for col in range(y-1):
r = np.median([cim1[row][col][0],cim2[row][col][0],cim3[row][col][0]]).astype(int)
g = np.median([cim1[row][col][1],cim2[row][col][1],cim3[row][col][1]]).astype(int)
b = np.median([cim1[row][col][2],cim2[row][col][2],cim3[row][col][2]]).astype(int)
newimage[row][col] = [r,g,b]
fix, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10,10))
ax.axis('off')
ax.imshow(newimage)
The final output:
If you had more images, you can completely remove the foreground. Hope you got the idea on which you can build upon.
My code assumes all your images are of the same dimensions. The solution will be a bit more complicated if you captured the images in different views. In that case you may have to use template matching algorithm (your pseudo code seems to be doing something similar) to extract the common canvas from your images.

Edge detection for image stored in matrix

I represent images in the form of 2-D arrays. I have this picture:
How can I get the pixels that are directly on the boundaries of the gray region and colorize them?
I want to get the coordinates of the matrix elements in green and red separately. I have only white, black and gray regions on the matrix.

The following should hopefully be okay for your needs (or at least help). The idea is to split into the various regions using logical checks based on threshold values. The edge between these regions can then be detected using numpy roll to shift pixels in x and y and comparing to see if we are at an edge,
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import scipy as sp
from skimage.morphology import closing
thresh1 = 127
thresh2 = 254
#Load image
im = sp.misc.imread('jBD9j.png')
#Get threashold mask for different regions
gryim = np.mean(im[:,:,0:2],2)
region1 = (thresh1<gryim)
region2 = (thresh2<gryim)
nregion1 = ~ region1
nregion2 = ~ region2
#Plot figure and two regions
fig, axs = plt.subplots(2,2)
axs[0,0].imshow(im)
axs[0,1].imshow(region1)
axs[1,0].imshow(region2)
#Clean up any holes, etc (not needed for simple figures here)
#region1 = sp.ndimage.morphology.binary_closing(region1)
#region1 = sp.ndimage.morphology.binary_fill_holes(region1)
#region1.astype('bool')
#region2 = sp.ndimage.morphology.binary_closing(region2)
#region2 = sp.ndimage.morphology.binary_fill_holes(region2)
#region2.astype('bool')
#Get location of edge by comparing array to it's
#inverse shifted by a few pixels
shift = -2
edgex1 = (region1 ^ np.roll(nregion1,shift=shift,axis=0))
edgey1 = (region1 ^ np.roll(nregion1,shift=shift,axis=1))
edgex2 = (region2 ^ np.roll(nregion2,shift=shift,axis=0))
edgey2 = (region2 ^ np.roll(nregion2,shift=shift,axis=1))
#Plot location of edge over image
axs[1,1].imshow(im)
axs[1,1].contour(edgex1,2,colors='r',lw=2.)
axs[1,1].contour(edgey1,2,colors='r',lw=2.)
axs[1,1].contour(edgex2,2,colors='g',lw=2.)
axs[1,1].contour(edgey2,2,colors='g',lw=2.)
plt.show()
Which gives the . For simplicity I've use roll with the inverse of each region. You could roll each successive region onto the next to detect edges
Thank you to #Kabyle for offering a reward, this is a problem that I spent a while looking for a solution to. I tried scipy skeletonize, feature.canny, topology module and openCV with limited success... This way was the most robust for my case (droplet interface tracking). Hope it helps!

There is a very simple solution to this: by definition any pixel which has both white and gray neighbors is on your "red" edge, and gray and black neighbors is on the "green" edge. The lightest/darkest neighbors are returned by the maximum/minimum filters in skimage.filters.rank, and a binary combination of masks of pixels that have a lightest/darkest neighbor which is white/gray or gray/black respectively produce the edges.
Result:
A worked solution:
import numpy
import skimage.filters.rank
import skimage.morphology
import skimage.io
# convert image to a uint8 image which only has 0, 128 and 255 values
# the source png image provided has other levels in it so it needs to be thresholded - adjust the thresholding method for your data
img_raw = skimage.io.imread('jBD9j.png', as_grey=True)
img = numpy.zeros_like(img, dtype=numpy.uint8)
img[:,:] = 128
img[ img_raw < 0.25 ] = 0
img[ img_raw > 0.75 ] = 255
# define "next to" - this may be a square, diamond, etc
selem = skimage.morphology.disk(1)
# create masks for the two kinds of edges
black_gray_edges = (skimage.filters.rank.minimum(img, selem) == 0) & (skimage.filters.rank.maximum(img, selem) == 128)
gray_white_edges = (skimage.filters.rank.minimum(img, selem) == 128) & (skimage.filters.rank.maximum(img, selem) == 255)
# create a color image
img_result = numpy.dstack( [img,img,img] )
# assign colors to edge masks
img_result[ black_gray_edges, : ] = numpy.asarray( [ 0, 255, 0 ] )
img_result[ gray_white_edges, : ] = numpy.asarray( [ 255, 0, 0 ] )
imshow(img_result)
P.S. Pixels which have black and white neighbors, or all three colors neighbors, are in an undefined category. The code above doesn't color those. You need to figure out how you want the output to be colored in those cases; but it is easy to extend the approach above to produce another mask or two for that.
P.S. The edges are two pixels wide. There is no getting around that without more information: the edges are between two areas, and you haven't defined which one of the two areas you want them to overlap in each case, so the only symmetrical solution is to overlap both areas by one pixel.
P.S. This counts the pixel itself as its own neighbor. An isolated white or black pixel on gray, or vice versa, will be considered as an edge (as well as all the pixels around it).

While plonser's answer may be rather straight forward to implement, I see it failing when it comes to sharp and thin edges. Nevertheless, I suggest you use part of his approach as preconditioning.
In a second step you want to use the Marching Squares Algorithm. According to the documentation of scikit-image, it is
a special case of the marching cubes algorithm (Lorensen, William and
Harvey E. Cline. Marching Cubes: A High Resolution 3D Surface
Construction Algorithm. Computer Graphics (SIGGRAPH 87 Proceedings)
21(4) July 1987, p. 163-170
There even exists a Python implementation as part of the scikit-image package. I have been using this algorithm (my own Fortran implementation, though) successfully for edge detection of eye diagrams in communications engineering.
Ad 1: Preconditioning
Create a copy of your image and make it two color only, e.g. black/white. The coordinates remain the same, but you make sure that the algorithm can properly make a yes/no-decision independent from the values that you use in your matrix representation of the image.
Ad 2: Edge Detection
Wikipedia as well as various blogs provide you with a pretty elaborate description of the algorithm in various languages, so I will not go into it's details. However, let me give you some practical advice:
Your image has open boundaries at the bottom. Instead of modifying the algorithm, you can artifically add another row of pixels (black or grey to bound the white/grey areas).
The choice of the starting point is critical. If there are not too many images to be processed, I suggest you select it manually. Otherwise you will need to define rules. Since the Marching Squares Algorithm can start anywhere inside a bounded area, you could choose any pixel of a given color/value to detect the corresponding edge (it will initially start walking in one direction to find an edge).
The algorithm returns the exact 2D positions, e.g. (x/y)-tuples. You can either
iterate through the list and colorize the corresponding pixels by assigning a different value or
create a mask to select parts of your matrix and assign the value that corresponds to a different color, e.g. green or red.
Finally: Some Post-Processing
I suggested to add an artificial boundary to the image. This has two advantages:
1. The Marching Squares Algorithm works out of the box.
2. There is no need to distinguish between image boundary and the interface between two areas within the image. Just remove the artificial boundary once you are done setting the colorful edges -- this will remove the colored lines at the boundary of the image.

Basically by follow pyStarter's suggestion of using the marching square algorithm from scikit-image, the desired could contours can be extracted with the following code:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import scipy as sp
from skimage import measure
import scipy.ndimage as ndimage
from skimage.color import rgb2gray
from pprint import pprint
#Load image
im = rgb2gray(sp.misc.imread('jBD9j.png'))
n, bins_edges = np.histogram(im.flatten(),bins = 100)
# Skip the black area, and assume two distinct regions, white and grey
max_counts = np.sort(n[bins_edges[0:-1] > 0])[-2:]
thresholds = np.select(
[max_counts[i] == n for i in range(max_counts.shape[0])],
[bins_edges[0:-1]] * max_counts.shape[0]
)
# filter our the non zero values
thresholds = thresholds[thresholds > 0]
fig, axs = plt.subplots()
# Display image
axs.imshow(im, interpolation='nearest', cmap=plt.cm.gray)
colors = ['r','g']
for i, threshold in enumerate(thresholds):
contours = measure.find_contours(im, threshold)
# Display all contours found for this threshold
for n, contour in enumerate(contours):
axs.plot(contour[:,1], contour[:,0],colors[i], lw = 4)
axs.axis('image')
axs.set_xticks([])
axs.set_yticks([])
plt.show()
!
However, from your image there is no clear defined gray region, so I took the two largest counts of intensities in the image and thresholded on these. A bit disturbing is the red region in the middle of the white region, however I think this could be tweaked with the number of bins in the histogram procedure. You could also set these manually as Ed Smith did.

Maybe there is a more elegant way to do that ...
but in case your array is a numpy array with dimensions (N,N) (gray scale) you can do
import numpy as np
# assuming black -> 0 and white -> 1 and grey -> 0.5
black_reg = np.where(a < 0.1, a, 10)
white_reg = np.where(a > 0.9, a, 10)
xx_black,yy_black = np.gradient(black_reg)
xx_white,yy_white = np.gradient(white_reg)
# getting the coordinates
coord_green = np.argwhere(xx_black**2 + yy_black**2>0.2)
coord_red = np.argwhere(xx_white**2 + yy_white**2>0.2)
The number 0.2 is just a threshold and needs to be adjusted.

I think you are probably looking for edge detection method for gray scale images. There are many ways to do that. Maybe this can help http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_detection. For differentiating edges between white and gray and edges between black and gray, try use local average intensity.

Counting particles using image processing in python

Is there any good algorithm for detecting particles on a changing background intensity?
For example, if I have the following image:
Is there a way to count the small white particles, even with the clearly different background that appears towards the lower left?
To be a little more clear, I would like to label the image and count the particles with an algorithm that finds these particles to be significant:
I have tried many things with the PIL, cv , scipy , numpy , etc. modules.
I got some hints from this very similar SO question, and it appears at first glance that you could take a simple threshold like so:
im = mahotas.imread('particles.jpg')
T = mahotas.thresholding.otsu(im)
labeled, nr_objects = ndimage.label(im>T)
print nr_objects
pylab.imshow(labeled)
but because of the changing background you get this:
I have also tried other ideas, such as a technique I found for measuring paws, which I implemented in this way:
import numpy as np
import scipy
import pylab
import pymorph
import mahotas
from scipy import ndimage
import cv
def detect_peaks(image):
"""
Takes an image and detect the peaks usingthe local maximum filter.
Returns a boolean mask of the peaks (i.e. 1 when
the pixel's value is the neighborhood maximum, 0 otherwise)
"""
# define an 8-connected neighborhood
neighborhood = ndimage.morphology.generate_binary_structure(2,2)
#apply the local maximum filter; all pixel of maximal value
#in their neighborhood are set to 1
local_max = ndimage.filters.maximum_filter(image, footprint=neighborhood)==image
#local_max is a mask that contains the peaks we are
#looking for, but also the background.
#In order to isolate the peaks we must remove the background from the mask.
#we create the mask of the background
background = (image==0)
#a little technicality: we must erode the background in order to
#successfully subtract it form local_max, otherwise a line will
#appear along the background border (artifact of the local maximum filter)
eroded_background = ndimage.morphology.binary_erosion(background, structure=neighborhood, border_value=1)
#we obtain the final mask, containing only peaks,
#by removing the background from the local_max mask
detected_peaks = local_max - eroded_background
return detected_peaks
im = mahotas.imread('particles.jpg')
imf = ndimage.gaussian_filter(im, 3)
#rmax = pymorph.regmax(imf)
detected_peaks = detect_peaks(imf)
pylab.imshow(pymorph.overlay(im, detected_peaks))
pylab.show()
but this gives no luck either, showing this result:
Using the regional max function, I get images which almost appear to be giving correct particle identification, but there are either too many, or too few particles in the wrong spots depending on my gaussian filtering (images have gaussian filter of 2,3, & 4):
Also, it would need to work on images similar to this as well:
This is the same type of image above, just at a much higher density of particles.
EDIT: Solved solution: I was able to get a decent working solution to this problem using the following code:
import cv2
import pylab
from scipy import ndimage
im = cv2.imread('particles.jpg')
pylab.figure(0)
pylab.imshow(im)
gray = cv2.cvtColor(im, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
gray = cv2.GaussianBlur(gray, (5,5), 0)
maxValue = 255
adaptiveMethod = cv2.ADAPTIVE_THRESH_GAUSSIAN_C#cv2.ADAPTIVE_THRESH_MEAN_C #cv2.ADAPTIVE_THRESH_GAUSSIAN_C
thresholdType = cv2.THRESH_BINARY#cv2.THRESH_BINARY #cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV
blockSize = 5 #odd number like 3,5,7,9,11
C = -3 # constant to be subtracted
im_thresholded = cv2.adaptiveThreshold(gray, maxValue, adaptiveMethod, thresholdType, blockSize, C)
labelarray, particle_count = ndimage.measurements.label(im_thresholded)
print particle_count
pylab.figure(1)
pylab.imshow(im_thresholded)
pylab.show()
This will show the images like this:
(which is the given image)
and
(which is the counted particles)
and calculate the particle count as 60.

I had solved the "variable brightness in background" by using a tuned difference threshold with a technique called Adaptive Contrast. It works by performing a linear combination (a difference, in the case) of a grayscale image with a blurred version of itself, then applying a threshold to it.
Convolve the image with a suitable statistical operator.
Subtract the original from the convolved image, correcting intensity scale/gamma if necessary.
Threshold the difference image with a constant.
(original paper)
I did this very successfully with scipy.ndimage, in the floating-point domain (way better results than integer image processing), like this:
original_grayscale = numpy.asarray(some_PIL_image.convert('L'), dtype=float)
blurred_grayscale = scipy.ndimage.filters.gaussian_filter(original_grayscale, blur_parameter)
difference_image = original_grayscale - (multiplier * blurred_grayscale);
image_to_be_labeled = ((difference_image > threshold) * 255).astype('uint8') # not sure if it is necessary
labelarray, particle_count = scipy.ndimage.measurements.label(image_to_be_labeled)
Hope this helps!!

I cannot really give a definite answer, but here are a few pointers:
The function mahotas.morph.regmax might be better than the maximum filter as it removes pseudo-maxima. Perhaps combine this with a global threshold, with a local threshold (such as the mean over a window) or both.
If you have several images and the same uneven background, then maybe you can compute an average background and normalize against that, or use empty images as your estimate of background. This would be the case if you have a microscope, and like every microscope I've seen, the illumination is uneven.
Something like:
average = average_of_many(images)
# smooth it
average = mahotas.gaussian_filter(average,24)
Now you preprocess your images, like:
preproc = image/average
or something like that.