Develop Reference

remove demarcation from text image - image processing

Hi I need to write a program that remove demarcation from gray scale image(image with text in it)
i read about thresholding and blurring but still i dont see how can i do it.
my image is an image of a hebrew text like that:
and i need to remove the demarcation(assuming that the demarcation is the smallest element in the image) the output need to be something like that
I want to write the code in python using opencv, what topics do i need to learn to be able to do that, and how?
thank you.
Edit:
I can use only cv2 functions

The symbols you want to remove are significantly smaller than all other shapes, you can use that to determine witch ones to remove.
First use threshold to convert the image to binary. Next, you can use findContours to detect the shapes and then contourArea to determine if the shape is larger than a threshold.
Finally you can can create a mask to remove the unwanted shapes, draw the larger symbols on a new image or draw the smaller symbols in white over the original symbols in the original image - making them disappear. I used that last technique in the code below.
Result:
Code:
import cv2
# load image as grayscale
img = cv2.imread('1MioS.png',0)
# convert to binary. Inverted, so you get white symbols on black background
_ , thres = cv2.threshold(img, 200, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV)
# find contours in the thresholded image (this gives all symbols)
contours, hierarchy = cv2.findContours(thres, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
# loop through the contours, if the size of the contour is below a threshold,
# draw a white shape over it in the input image
for cnt in contours:
if cv2.contourArea(cnt) < 250:
cv2.drawContours(img,[cnt],0,(255),-1)
# display result
cv2.imshow('res', img)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
Update
To find the largest contour, you can loop through them and keep track of the largest value:
maxArea = 0
for cnt in contours:
currArea = cv2.contourArea(cnt)
if currArea > maxArea:
maxArea = currArea
print(maxArea)
I also whipped up a little more complex version, that creates a sorted list of the indexes and sizes of the contours. Then it looks for the largest relative difference in size of all contours, so you know which contours are 'small' and 'large'. I do not know if this works for all letters / fonts.
# create a list of the indexes of the contours and their sizes
contour_sizes = []
for index,cnt in enumerate(contours):
contour_sizes.append([index,cv2.contourArea(cnt)])
# sort the list based on the contour size.
# this changes the order of the elements in the list
contour_sizes.sort(key=lambda x:x[1])
# loop through the list and determine the largest relative distance
indexOfMaxDifference = 0
currentMaxDifference = 0
for i in range(1,len(contour_sizes)):
sizeDifference = contour_sizes[i][1] / contour_sizes[i-1][1]
if sizeDifference > currentMaxDifference:
currentMaxDifference = sizeDifference
indexOfMaxDifference = i
# loop through the list again, ending (or starting) at the indexOfMaxDifference, to draw the contour
for i in range(0, indexOfMaxDifference):
cv2.drawContours(img,contours,contour_sizes[i][0] ,(255),-1)
To get the background color you can do use minMaxLoc. This returns the lowest color value and it's position of an image (also the max value, but you don't need that). If you apply it to the thresholded image - where the background is black -, it will return the location of a background pixel (big odds it will be (0,0) ). You can then look up this pixel in the original color image.
# get the location of a pixel with background color
min_val, _, min_loc, _ = cv2.minMaxLoc(thres)
# load color image
img_color = cv2.imread('1MioS.png')
# get bgr values of background
b,g,r = img_color[min_loc]
# convert from numpy object
background_color = (int(b),int(g),int(r))
and then to draw the contours
cv2.drawContours(img_color,contours,contour_sizes[i][0],background_color,-1)
and of course
cv2.imshow('res', img_color)

This looks like a problem for template matching since you have what looks like a known font and can easily understand what the characters and/or demarcations are. Check out https://opencv-python-tutroals.readthedocs.io/en/latest/py_tutorials/py_imgproc/py_template_matching/py_template_matching.html
Admittedly, the tutorial talks about finding the match; modification is up to you. In that case, you know the exact shape of the template itself, so using that information along with the location of the match, just overwrite the image data with the appropriate background color (based on the examples above, 255).

You can solve it by removing all the small clusters.
I found a Python solution (using OpenCV) here.
For supporting smaller fonts, I added the following heuristic:
"The largest size of the demarcation cluster is 1/500 of the largest letter cluster".
The heuristic can be refined, by statistical analysts (or improved by other heuristics, such as demarcation locations relative to the letters).
import numpy as np
import cv2
I = cv2.imread('Goodluck.png', cv2.IMREAD_GRAYSCALE)
J = 255 - I # Invert I
img = cv2.threshold(J, 127, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)[1] # Convert to binary
# https://answers.opencv.org/question/194566/removing-noise-using-connected-components/
nlabel,labels,stats,centroids = cv2.connectedComponentsWithStats(img, connectivity=8)
labels_small = []
areas_small = []
# Find largest cluster:
max_size = np.max(stats[:, cv2.CC_STAT_AREA])
thresh_size = max_size / 500 # Set the threshold to maximum cluster size divided by 500.
for i in range(1, nlabel):
if stats[i, cv2.CC_STAT_AREA] < thresh_size:
labels_small.append(i)
areas_small.append(stats[i, cv2.CC_STAT_AREA])
mask = np.ones_like(labels, dtype=np.uint8)
for i in labels_small:
I[labels == i] = 255
cv2.imshow('I', I)
cv2.waitKey(0)
Here is a MATLAB code sample (kept threshold = 200):
clear
I = imbinarize(rgb2gray(imread('בהצלחה.png')));
figure;imshow(I);
J = ~I;
%Clustering
CC = bwconncomp(J);
%Cover all small clusters with zewros.
for i = 1:CC.NumObjects
C = CC.PixelIdxList{i}; %Cluster coordinates.
%Fill small clusters with zeros.
if numel(C) < 200
J(C) = 0;
end
end
J = ~J;
figure;imshow(J);
Result:

Finding the boundary points of a contour in opencv numpy

complete noob at open cv and numpy here. here is the image: here is my code:
import numpy as np
import cv2
im = cv2.imread('test.jpg')
imgray = cv2.cvtColor(im, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
imgray = cv2.medianBlur(imgray, ksize=7)
ret, thresh = cv2.threshold(imgray, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY+cv2.THRESH_OTSU)
_, contours, _ = cv2.findContours(thresh, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_NONE)
print ("number of countours detected before filtering %d -> "%len(contours))
new = np.zeros(imgray.shape)
new = cv2.drawContours(im,contours,len(contours)-1,(0,0,255),18)
cv2.namedWindow('Display',cv2.WINDOW_NORMAL)
cv2.imshow('Display',new)
cv2.waitKey()
mask = np.zeros(imgray.shape,np.uint8)
cv2.drawContours(mask,[contours[len(contours)-1]],0,255,-1)
pixelpoints = cv2.findNonZero(mask)
cv2.imwrite("masked_image.jpg",mask)
print(len(pixelpoints))
print("type of pixelpoints is %s" %type(pixelpoints))
the length of pixelpoints is nearly 2 million since it contains all the point covered by the contours. But i only require the bordering point of that contour. How do I do it? I have tried several methods from opencv documentation but always errors with tuples and sorting operations. please...help?
I only require the border points of the contour :(

Is this what you mean by border points of a contour?
The white lines you see are points that I have marked out in white against the blue drawn contours. There's a little spot at the bottom right because I think its most likely that your black background isn't really black and so when I did thresholding and a floodfill to get this,
there was a tiny white speck at the same spot. But if you play around with the parameters and do a more proper thresholding and floodfill it shouldn't be an issue.
In openCV's drawContours function, the cnts would contain lists of contours and each contour will contain an array of points. Each point is also of type numpy.ndarray. If you want to place all points of each contour in one place so it returns you a set of points of boundary points (like the white dots outline in the image above), you might want to append them all into a list. You can try this:
#rgb is brg instead
contoured=cv2.drawContours(black, cnts, -1, (255,0,0), 3)
#list of ALL points of ALL contours
all_pixels=[]
for i in range(0, len(cnts)):
for j in range(0,len(cnts[i])):
all_pixels.append(cnts[i][j])
When I tried to
print(len(all_pixels))
it returned me 2139 points.
Do this if you want to mark out the points for visualization purposes (e.g. like my white points):
#contouredC is a copy of the contoured image above
contouredC[x_val, y_val]=[255,255,255]
If you want less points, just use a step function when iterating through to draw the white points out. Something like this:
In python, for loops are slow so I think there's better ways of replacing the nested for loops with a np.where() function or something instead. Will update this if/when I figure it out. Also, this needs better thresholding and binarization techniques. Floodfill technique referenced from: Python 2.7: Area opening and closing binary image in Python not so accurate.
Hope it helps.

contour approximation in opencv python is giving wrong result everytime

I am an absolute beginner in image processing.I want to detect a nested shape among various different edges.from my program I have successfully detected my expected contour through hierarchy relation.but my problem arises when I am going to detect the shape.for contour approximation, I am using cv2.approxpolyDP() method/function on my desired contour using its index number.but every time it is resulting in the same output, which is "1".I don't know where I am mistaking.please have a look and suggest me some.The code is given below and the images to be detected is also given in those links. please help me...
import cv2
import numpy as np
maxx=0
original_color=cv2.imread("tri.jpg",1)
original=cv2.cvtColor(original_color,cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
#cv2.imshow("original",original)
blur=cv2.GaussianBlur(original,(5,5),0)
ret,thresh=cv2.threshold(blur,50,255,cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
edges = cv2.Canny(thresh,100,200)
image,contours,hierarchy=cv2.findContours(edges.copy(),cv2.RETR_TREE,cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
print len(contours)
##for c in range(0,len(hierarchy)) :
## a=zip(hierarchy[c],contours[c])
for i in range(0,len(hierarchy[0])):
if hierarchy[0][i][2]>=maxx :
if(hierarchy[0][i][3]==(hierarchy[0][i][2]-2)):
maxx=hierarchy[0][i][2]
index=i
cnt=contours[index]
for c in cnt :
peri=cv2.arcLength(c,True)
approx=cv2.approxPolyDP(c,0.04*peri,True)
print hierarchy
print maxx
print len(approx)
cv2.drawContours(original_color,contours,index,(0,255,0),3)
cv2.imshow("Show",original_color)
cv2.waitKey()
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
Before Detection
Succesfully Detected

The result of findContours is a list of list of points, this means that the problem is here:
cnt=contours[index]
for c in cnt :
peri=cv2.arcLength(c,True)
approx=cv2.approxPolyDP(c,0.04*peri,True)
Here you select a contour(list of pointS) and then loop for each point and do the approxPolyDP with only 1 point. You should do it to the contour. So, if you want it to do it for the selected contour, you should do:
cnt=contours[index]
peri=cv2.arcLength(cnt,True)
approx=cv2.approxPolyDP(cnt,0.04*peri,True)
If you want to do it for each contour then do like this (keeping the print inside the loop, if not it will show only the last one):
for c in contours:
peri=cv2.arcLength(c,True)
approx=cv2.approxPolyDP(c,0.04*peri,True)
print len(approx)

OpenCV (Python): Construct Rectangle from thresholded image

The image below shows an aerial photo of a house block (re-oriented with the longest side vertical), and the same image subjected to Adaptive Thresholding and Difference of Gaussians.
Images: Base; Adaptive Thresholding; Difference of Gaussians
The roof-print of the house is obvious (to the human eye) on the AdThresh image: it's a matter of connecting some obvious dots. In the sample image, finding the blue-bounded box below -
Image with desired rectangle marked in blue
I've had a crack at implementing HoughLinesP() and findContours(), but get nothing sensible (probably because there's some nuance that I'm missing). The python script-chunk that fails to find anything remotely like the blue box, is as follows:
import cv2
import numpy as np
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
# read in full (RGBA) image - to get alpha layer to use as mask
img = cv2.imread('rotated_12.png', cv2.IMREAD_UNCHANGED)
grey = cv2.cvtColor(img,cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
# Otsu's thresholding after Gaussian filtering
blur_base = cv2.GaussianBlur(grey,(9,9),0)
blur_diff = cv2.GaussianBlur(grey,(15,15),0)
_,thresh1 = cv2.threshold(grey,0,255,cv2.THRESH_BINARY+cv2.THRESH_OTSU)
thresh = cv2.adaptiveThreshold(grey,255,cv2.ADAPTIVE_THRESH_GAUSSIAN_C, cv2.THRESH_BINARY,11,2)
DoG_01 = blur_base - blur_diff
edges_blur = cv2.Canny(blur_base,70,210)
# Find Contours
(ed, cnts,h) = cv2.findContours(grey, cv2.RETR_TREE, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
cnts = sorted(cnts, key = cv2.contourArea, reverse = True)[:4]
for c in cnts:
approx = cv2.approxPolyDP(c, 0.1*cv2.arcLength(c, True), True)
cv2.drawContours(grey, [approx], -1, (0, 255, 0), 1)
# Hough Lines
minLineLength = 30
maxLineGap = 5
lines = cv2.HoughLinesP(edges_blur,1,np.pi/180,20,minLineLength,maxLineGap)
print "lines found:", len(lines)
for line in lines:
cv2.line(grey,(line[0][0], line[0][1]),(line[0][2],line[0][3]),(255,0,0),2)
# plot all the images
images = [img, thresh, DoG_01]
titles = ['Base','AdThresh','DoG01']
for i in xrange(len(images)):
plt.subplot(1,len(images),i+1),plt.imshow(images[i],'gray')
plt.title(titles[i]), plt.xticks([]), plt.yticks([])
plt.savefig('a_edgedetect_12.png')
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
I am trying to set things up without excessive parameterisation. I'm wary of 'tailoring' an algorithm for just this one image since this process will be run on hundreds of thousands of images (with roofs/rooves of different colours which may be less distinguishable from background). That said, I would love to see a solution that 'hit' the blue-box target - that way I could at the very least work out what I've done wrong.
If anyone has a quick-and-dirty way to do this sort of thing, it would be awesome to get a Python code snippet to work with.
The 'base' image ->
Base Image

You should apply the following:
1. Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization-CLAHE and convert to gray-scale.
2. Gaussian Blur & Morphological transforms (dialation, erosion, etc) as mentioned by #bad_keypoints. This will help you get rid of the background noise. This is the most tricky step as the results will depend on the order in which you apply (first Gaussian Blur and then Morphological transforms or vice versa) and the window sizes you choose for this purpose.
3. Apply Adaptive thresholding
4. Apply Canny's Edge detection
5. Find contour having four corner points
As said earlier you need to tweak with input parameters of these functions and also need to validate these parameters with other images. As it might be possible that it will work for this case but not for other cases. Based on trial and error you need to fix the parameter values.

OpenCV get centers of multiple objects

I'm trying to build a simple image analyzing tool that will find items that fit in a color range and then finds the centers of said objects.
As an example, after masking, I'm analyzing an image like this:
What I'm doing so far code-wise is rather simple:
import cv2
import numpy
bound = 30
inc = numpy.array([225,225,225])
lower = inc - bound
upper = inc + bound
img = cv2.imread("input.tiff")
cv2.imshow("Original", img)
mask = cv2.inRange(img, lower, upper)
cv2.imshow("Range", mask)
contours = cv2.findContours(mask, cv2.RETR_CCOMP, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_TC89_L1)
print contours
This, however, gives me a countless number of contours. I'm somewhat at a loss while reading the corresponding manpage. Can I use moments to reasonably analyze the contours? Are contours even the right tool for this?
I found this question, that vaguely covers finding the center of one object, but how would I modify this approach when there are multiple items?
How do I find the centers of the objects in the image? For example, in the above sample image I'm looking to find three points (the centers of the rectangle and the two circles).

Try print len(contours). That will give you around the expected answer. The output you see is the full representation of the contours which could be thousands of points.
Try this code:
import cv2
import numpy
img = cv2.imread('inp.png', 0)
_, contours, _ = cv2.findContours(img.copy(), cv2.RETR_CCOMP, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_TC89_L1)
print len(contours)
centres = []
for i in range(len(contours)):
moments = cv2.moments(contours[i])
centres.append((int(moments['m10']/moments['m00']), int(moments['m01']/moments['m00'])))
cv2.circle(img, centres[-1], 3, (0, 0, 0), -1)
print centres
cv2.imshow('image', img)
cv2.imwrite('output.png',img)
cv2.waitKey(0)
This gives me 4 centres:
[(474, 411), (96, 345), (58, 214), (396, 145)]
The obvious thing to do here is to also check for the area of the contours and if it is too small as a percentage of the image, don't count it as a real contour, it will just be noise. Just add something like this to the top of the for loop:
if cv2.contourArea(contours[i]) < 100:
continue
For the return values from findContours, I'm not sure what the first value is for as it is not present in the C++ version of OpenCV (which is what I use). The second value is obviously just the contours (an array of arrays) and the third value is a hierarchy holding information on the nesting of contours, which can be very handy.

You can use the opencv minEnclosingCircle() function on your contours to get the center of each object.
Check out this example which is in c++ but you can adapt the logic Example