Develop Reference

How to find rectangles in a full transparent object?

I have an input image of a fully transparent object:
I need to detect the 42 rectangles in this image. This is an example of the output image I need (I marked 6 rectangles for better understanding):
The problem is that the rectangles look really different. I have to use this input image.
How can I achieve this?
Edit 1: Here is a input image as png:

If you calculate the variance down the rows and across the columns, using:
import cv2
import numpy as np
im = cv2.imread('YOURIMAGE', cv2.IMREAD_GRAYSCALE)
# Calculate horizontal and vertical variance
h = np.var(im, axis=1)
v = np.var(im, axis=0)
You can plot them and hopefully locate the peaks of variance which should be your objects:

Mark Setchell's idea is out-of-the-box. Here is a more traditional approach.
Approach:
The image contains boxes whose intensity fades away in the lower rows. Using global equalization would fail here since the intensity changes of the entire image is taken into account. I opted for a local equalization approach in OpenCV this is available as CLAHE (Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization))
Using CLAHE:
Equalization is applied on individual regions of the image whose size can be predefined.
To avoid over amplification, contrast limiting is applied, (hence the name).
Let's see how to use it in our problem:
Code:
# read image and store green channel
green_channel = img[:,:,1]
# grid-size for CLAHE
ts = 8
# initialize CLAHE function with parameters
clahe = cv2.createCLAHE(clipLimit=2.0, tileGridSize=(ts, ts))
# apply the function
cl = clahe.apply(green_channel)
Notice the image above, the boxes in the lower regions appear slightly darker as expected. This will help us later on.
# apply Otsu threshold
r,th_cl = cv2.threshold(cl, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV + cv2.THRESH_OTSU)
# dilation performed using vertical kernels to connect disjoined boxes
vertical_kernel = cv2.getStructuringElement(cv2.MORPH_RECT, (1, 3))
dilate = cv2.dilate(th_cl, vertical_kernel, iterations=1)
# find contours and draw bounding boxes
contours, hierarchy = cv2.findContours(dilate, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_NONE)
img2 = img.copy()
for c in contours:
area = cv2.contourArea(c)
if area > 100:
x, y, w, h = cv2.boundingRect(c)
img2 = cv2.rectangle(img2, (x, y), (x + w, y + h), (0,255,255), 1)
(The top-rightmost box isn't covered properly. You would need to tweak the various parameters to get an accurate result)
Other pre-processing approaches you can try:
Global equalization
Contrast stretching
Normalization

Detecting cardboard Box and Text on it using OpenCV

I want to count cardboard boxes and read a specific label which will only contain 3 words with white background on a conveyer belt using OpenCV and Python. Attached is the image I am using for experiments. The problem so far is that I am unable to detect the complete box due to noise and if I try to check w and h in x, y, w, h = cv2.boundingRect(cnt) then it simply filter out the text. in this case ABC is written on the box. Also the box have detected have spikes on both top and bottom, which I am not sure how to filter.
Below it the code I am using
import cv2
# reading image
image = cv2.imread('img002.jpg')
# convert the image to grayscale format
img_gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
# apply binary thresholding
ret, thresh = cv2.threshold(img_gray, 150, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
# visualize the binary image
cv2.imshow('Binary image', thresh)
# collectiong contours
contours,h = cv2.findContours(thresh, cv2.RETR_TREE,cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
# looping through contours
for cnt in contours:
x, y, w, h = cv2.boundingRect(cnt)
cv2.rectangle(image,(x,y),(x+w,y+h),(0,215,255),2)
cv2.imshow('img', image)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
Also please suggest how to crop the text ABC and then apply an OCR on that to read the text.
Many Thanks.
EDIT 2: Many thanks for your answer and based upon your suggestion I changed the code so that it can check for boxes in a video. It worked liked a charm expect it only failed to identify one box for a long time. Below is my code and link to the video I have used. I have couple of questions around this as I am new to OpenCV, if you can find some time to answer.
import cv2
import numpy as np
from time import time as timer
def get_region(image):
contours, hierarchy = cv2.findContours(image, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_NONE)
c = max(contours, key = cv2.contourArea)
black = np.zeros((image.shape[0], image.shape[1]), np.uint8)
mask = cv2.drawContours(black,[c],0,255, -1)
return mask
cap = cv2.VideoCapture("Resources/box.mp4")
ret, frame = cap.read()
fps = 60
fps /= 1000
framerate = timer()
elapsed = int()
while(1):
start = timer()
ret, frame = cap.read()
# convert the image to grayscale format
hsv = cv2.cvtColor(frame, cv2.COLOR_BGR2HSV)
# Performing threshold on the hue channel `hsv[:,:,0]`
thresh = cv2.threshold(hsv[:,:,0],127,255,cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV+cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]
mask = get_region(thresh)
masked_img = cv2.bitwise_and(frame, frame, mask = mask)
newImg = cv2.cvtColor(masked_img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
# collectiong contours
c,h = cv2.findContours(newImg, cv2.RETR_TREE,cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
cont_sorted = sorted(c, key=cv2.contourArea, reverse=True)[:5]
x,y,w,h = cv2.boundingRect(cont_sorted[0])
cv2.rectangle(frame,(x,y),(x+w,y+h),(255,0,0),5)
#cv2.imshow('frame',masked_img)
cv2.imshow('Out',frame)
if cv2.waitKey(1) & 0xFF == ord('q') or ret==False :
break
diff = timer() - start
while diff < fps:
diff = timer() - start
cap.release()
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
Link to video: https://www.storyblocks.com/video/stock/boxes-and-packages-move-along-a-conveyor-belt-in-a-shipment-factory-a-few-blank-boxes-for-your-custom-graphics-lmgxtwq
Questions:
How can we be 100% sure if the rectangle drawn is actually on top of a box and not on belt or somewhere else.
Can you please tell me how can I use the function you have provided in original answer to use for other boxes in this new code for video.
Is it correct way to again convert masked frame to grey, find contours again to draw a rectangle. Or is there a more efficient way to do it.
The final version of this code is intended to run on raspberry pi. So what can we do to optimize the code's performance.
Many thank again for your time.

There are 2 steps to be followed:
1. Box segmentation
We can assume there will be no background change since the conveyor belt is present. We can segment the box using a different color space. In the following I have used HSV color space:
img = cv2.imread('box.jpg')
hsv = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2HSV)
# Performing threshold on the hue channel `hsv[:,:,0]`
th = cv2.threshold(hsv[:,:,0],127,255,cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV+cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]
Masking the largest contour in the binary image:
def get_region(image):
contours, hierarchy = cv2.findContours(image, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_NONE)
c = max(contours, key = cv2.contourArea)
black = np.zeros((image.shape[0], image.shape[1]), np.uint8)
mask = cv2.drawContours(black,[c],0,255, -1)
return mask
mask = get_region(th)
Applying the mask on the original image:
masked_img = cv2.bitwise_and(img, img, mask = mask)
2. Text Detection:
The text region is enclosed in white, which can be isolated again by applying a suitable threshold. (You might want to apply some statistical measure to calculate the threshold)
# Applying threshold at 220 on green channel of 'masked_img'
result = cv2.threshold(masked_img[:,:,1],220,255,cv2.THRESH_BINARY)[1]
Note:
The code is written for the shared image. For boxes of different sizes you can filter contours with approximately 4 vertices/sides.
# Function to extract rectangular contours above a certain area
def extract_rect(contours, area_threshold):
rect_contours = []
for c in contours:
if cv2.contourArea(c) > area_threshold:
perimeter = cv2.arcLength(c, True)
approx = cv2.approxPolyDP(c, 0.02*perimeter, True)
if len(approx) == 4:
cv2.drawContours(image, [approx], 0, (0,255,0),2)
rect_contours.append(c)
return rect_contours
Experiment using a statistical value (mean, median, etc.) to find optimal threshold to detect text region.

Your additional questions warranted a separate answer:
1. How can we be 100% sure if the rectangle drawn is actually on top of a box and not on belt or somewhere else?
PRO: For this very purpose I chose the Hue channel of HSV color space. Shades of grey, white and black (on the conveyor belt) are neutral in this channel. The brown color of the box is contrasting could be easily segmented using Otsu threshold. Otsu's algorithm finds the optimal threshold value without user input.
CON You might face problems when boxes are also of the same color as conveyor belt
2. Can you please tell me how can I use the function you have provided in original answer to use for other boxes in this new code for video.
PRO: In case you want to find boxes using edge detection and without using color information; there is a high chance of getting many unwanted edges. By using extract_rect() function, you can filter contours that:
have approximately 4 sides (quadrilateral)
are above certain area
CON If you have parcels/packages/bags that have more than 4 sides you might need to change this.
3. Is it correct way to again convert masked frame to grey, find contours again to draw a rectangle. Or is there a more efficient way to do it.
I felt this is the best way, because all that is remaining is the textual region enclosed in white. Applying threshold of high value was the simplest idea in my mind. There might be a better way :)
(I am not in the position to answer the 4th question :) )

cv2.inRange() make it work for all inputs

I'm using OpenCv (4.x) on Anime Sketch dataset from Kaggle to get the image's silhouette. What I found to be the hardest part was to detect that empty areas inside that silhouette, areas between arm-body, legs and hair. The tutorials I followed always use "full filled" objects, like a ball, head or cars and I ended up tunning that code to make it work, but it is too specific so that tunning just work ok on one image.
Playing around in online-image-editor.com I've noticed that I can use the tool called Trans-parency to change one color, just like cv2.inRange() does.
Original image
The code:
image = cv2.imread("2.png",cv2.IMREAD_UNCHANGED)
crop_img = image[:, 0:512]
fuzz_factor = 0.97
maxColor = (crop_img[1,1] * 1).astype(int)
minColor = (maxColor * fuzz_factor).astype(int)
mask = cv2.inRange(crop_img, minColor, maxColor)
cv2.imshow("mask", mask)
cv2.waitKey()
and outputs this (not that bad..)
BUT then trying with another image it doesn't work anymore, output:
So, question(s):
There is some "magic rule" where I can extract a specific fuzz_factor for each image?
How could I use the image's right half to get that silhouette/contour?
Thanks guys

I post to close this question.
Thanks to Micka I made some progress, there are two variables that have high impact on output's quality:
fuzz_factor: which sets the color range for cv2.inRange()
max_contours: number of contours to draw (sorted by size)
High numbers are better until there are white zones that are not background, so next thing could be discard that ones.
import numpy as np
import cv2
# constants
fuzz_factor = 1
max_contours = -10
image_path = "9.png"
image = cv2.imread(image_path)
image = image[:, 0:512]
# background color boundaries
color = image[3,3]
upper = (color).astype(int)
lower = (color * (100 - fuzz_factor/2.0)/100).astype(int)
# create mask with specific colors
mask = cv2.inRange(image, lower, upper)
# get all contours
contours, _ = cv2.findContours(mask, mode = cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, method = cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_NONE)
if(len(contours) > 1):
# get the [max_contours] biggest areas
contours = sorted(contours, key=cv2.contourArea)[max_contours:]
# mask where contours are filled
mask = np.zeros_like(image)
# draw contours and fill
cv2.drawContours(mask, contours, -1, color=[255,255,255], thickness= -1)
cv2.drawContours(image, contours, -1, 255, 2)
cv2.imshow("Result", np.hstack([image, mask]))
cv2.waitKey(0)

how to fill the hollow lines opencv

I have an image like this:
after I applied some processings e.g. cv2.Canny(), it looks like this now:
As you can see that the black lines become hollow.
I have tried erosion and dilation, but if I do them many times, the 2 entrances will be closed(meaning become connected line or closed contour).
How could I make those lines solid like the below image while keep the 2 entrances not affected?
Update 1
I have tested the following answers with a few of photos, but the code seems customized to only be able to handle this one particular picture. Due to the restriction of SOF, I cannot upload photos larger than 2MB, so I uploaded them into my Microsoft OneDrive folder for your convenience to test.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Asflam6BEzhjgbIhgkL4rt1NLSjsZg?e=OXXKBK
Update 2
I picked up #fmw42's post as answer as his answer is the most detailed one. It doesn't answer my question but points out the correct way to process maze which is my ultimate goal. I like his approach of answering questions, firstly tells you what each step should do so that you have a clear idea about how to do the task, then provide the full code example from beginning to end. Very helpful.
Due to the limitation of SOF, I can only pick up one answer. If multiple answers are allowed, I would also pick up Shamshirsaz.Navid's answer. His answer not only points to the correct direction to solve the issue, but also the explanation with visualization really works well for me~! I guess it works equally well for all people who are trying to understand why each line of code is needed. Also he follows up my questions in comments, this makes the SOF a bit interactive :)
The Threshold track bar in Ann Zen's answer is also a very useful tip for people to quickly find out a optimal value.

Here is one way to process the maze and rectify it in Python/OpenCV.
Read the input
Convert to gray
Threshold
Use morphology close to remove the thinnest (extraneous) black lines
Invert the threshold
Get the external contours
Keep on those contours that are larger than 1/4 of both the width and height of the input
Draw those contours as white lines on black background
Get the convex hull from the white contour lines image
Draw the convex hull as white lines on black background
Use GoodFeaturesToTrack to get the 4 corners from the white hull lines image
Sort the 4 corners by angle relative to the centroid so that they are ordered clockwise: top-left, top-right, bottom-right, bottom-left
Set these points as the array of conjugate control points for the input
Use 1/2 the dimensions of the input to define the array of conjugate control points for the output
Compute the perspective transformation matrix
Warp the input image using the perspective matrix
Save the results
Input:
import cv2
import numpy as np
import math
# load image
img = cv2.imread('maze.jpg')
hh, ww = img.shape[:2]
# convert to gray
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
# threshold
thresh = cv2.threshold(gray, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY+cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]
# use morphology to remove the thin lines
kernel = cv2.getStructuringElement(cv2.MORPH_RECT , (5,1))
thresh = cv2.morphologyEx(thresh, cv2.MORPH_CLOSE, kernel)
# invert so that lines are white so that we can get contours for them
thresh_inv = 255 - thresh
# get external contours
contours = cv2.findContours(thresh_inv, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
contours = contours[0] if len(contours) == 2 else contours[1]
# keep contours whose bounding boxes are greater than 1/4 in each dimension
# draw them as white on black background
contour = np.zeros((hh,ww), dtype=np.uint8)
for cntr in contours:
x,y,w,h = cv2.boundingRect(cntr)
if w > ww/4 and h > hh/4:
cv2.drawContours(contour, [cntr], 0, 255, 1)
# get convex hull from contour image white pixels
points = np.column_stack(np.where(contour.transpose() > 0))
hull_pts = cv2.convexHull(points)
# draw hull on copy of input and on black background
hull = img.copy()
cv2.drawContours(hull, [hull_pts], 0, (0,255,0), 2)
hull2 = np.zeros((hh,ww), dtype=np.uint8)
cv2.drawContours(hull2, [hull_pts], 0, 255, 2)
# get 4 corners from white hull points on black background
num = 4
quality = 0.001
mindist = max(ww,hh) // 4
corners = cv2.goodFeaturesToTrack(hull2, num, quality, mindist)
corners = np.int0(corners)
for corner in corners:
px,py = corner.ravel()
cv2.circle(hull, (px,py), 5, (0,0,255), -1)
# get angles to each corner relative to centroid and store with x,y values in list
# angles are clockwise between -180 and +180 with zero along positive X axis (to right)
corner_info = []
center = np.mean(corners, axis=0)
centx = center.ravel()[0]
centy = center.ravel()[1]
for corner in corners:
px,py = corner.ravel()
dx = px - centx
dy = py - centy
angle = (180/math.pi) * math.atan2(dy,dx)
corner_info.append([px,py,angle])
# function to define sort key as element 2 (i.e. angle)
def takeThird(elem):
return elem[2]
# sort corner_info on angle so result will be TL, TR, BR, BL order
corner_info.sort(key=takeThird)
# make conjugate control points
# get input points from corners
corner_list = []
for x, y, angle in corner_info:
corner_list.append([x,y])
print(corner_list)
# define input points from (sorted) corner_list
input = np.float32(corner_list)
# define output points from dimensions of image, say half of input image
width = ww // 2
height = hh // 2
output = np.float32([[0,0], [width-1,0], [width-1,height-1], [0,height-1]])
# compute perspective matrix
matrix = cv2.getPerspectiveTransform(input,output)
# do perspective transformation setting area outside input to black
result = cv2.warpPerspective(img, matrix, (width,height), cv2.INTER_LINEAR, borderMode=cv2.BORDER_CONSTANT, borderValue=(0,0,0))
# save output
cv2.imwrite('maze_thresh.jpg', thresh)
cv2.imwrite('maze_contour.jpg', contour)
cv2.imwrite('maze_hull.jpg', hull)
cv2.imwrite('maze_rectified.jpg', result)
# Display various images to see the steps
cv2.imshow('thresh', thresh)
cv2.imshow('contour', contour)
cv2.imshow('hull', hull)
cv2.imshow('result', result)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
Thresholded Image after morphology:
Filtered Contours on black background:
Convex hull and 4 corners on input image:
Result from perspective warp:

You can try a simple threshold to detect the lines of the maze, as they are conveniently black:
import cv2
img = cv2.imread("maze.jpg")
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.BGR2GRAY)
_, thresh = cv2.threshold(gray, 60, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
cv2.imshow("Image", thresh)
cv2.waitKey(0)
Output:
You can adjust the threshold yourself with trackbars:
import cv2
cv2.namedWindow("threshold")
cv2.createTrackbar("", "threshold", 0, 255, id)
img = cv2.imread("maze.jpg")
while True:
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
t = cv2.getTrackbarPos("", "threshold")
_, thresh = cv2.threshold(gray, t, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
cv2.imshow("Image", thresh)
if cv2.waitKey(1) & 0xFF == ord("q"): # If you press the q key
break

Canny is an edge detector. It detects the lines along which color changes. A line in your input image has two such transitions, one on each side. Therefore you see two parallel lines on each side of a line in the image. This answer of mine explains the difference between edges and lines.
So, you shouldn’t be using an edge detector to detect lines in an image.
If a simple threshold doesn't properly binarize this image, try using a local threshold ("adaptive threshold" in OpenCV). Another thing that works well for images like these is applying a top hat filter (for this image, it would be a closing(img) - img), where the structuring element is adjusted to the width of the lines you want to find. This will result in an image that is easy to threshold and will preserve all lines thinner than the structuring element.

Check this:
import cv2
import numpy as np
im=cv2.imread("test2.jpg",1)
#convert 2 gray
mask=cv2.cvtColor(im,cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
#convert 2 black and white
mask=cv2.threshold(mask,127,255,cv2.THRESH_BINARY)[1]
#remove thin lines and texts and then remake main lines
mask=cv2.dilate(mask,np.ones((5, 5), 'uint8'))
mask=cv2.erode(mask,np.ones((4, 4), 'uint8'))
#smooth lines
mask=cv2.medianBlur(mask,3)
#write output mask
cv2.imwrite("mask2.jpg",mask)
From now on, everything can be done. You can delete extra blobs, you can extract lines from the original image according to the mask, and things like that.
Median:
Median changes are not much for this project. And it can be safely removed. But I prefer it because it rounds the ends of the lines a bit. You have to zoom in a lot to see the pixels. But this technique is usually used to remove salt/pepper noise.
Erode Kernel:
In the case of the kernel, the larger the number, the thicker the lines. Well, this is not always good. Because it causes the path lines to stick to the arrow and later it becomes difficult to separate the paths from the arrow.
Update:
It does not matter if part of the Maze is cleared. The important thing is that from this mask you can draw a rectangle around this shape and create a new mask for this image.
Make a white rectangle around these paths in a new mask. Completely whiten the inside of the mask with FloodFill or any other technique. Now you have a new mask that can take the whole shape out of the original image. Now in the next step you can correct Perspective.

Circular contour detection in an image python opencv

I am trying to have the circle detected in the following image.
So I did color thresholding and finally got this result.
Because of the lines in the center being removed, the circle is split into many small parts, so if I do contour detection on this, it can only give me each contour separately.
But is there a way I can somehow combine the contours so I could get a circle instead of just pieces of it?
Here is my code for color thresholding:
blurred = cv2.GaussianBlur(img, (9,9), 9)
ORANGE_MIN = np.array((12, 182, 221),np.uint8)
ORANGE_MAX = np.array((16, 227, 255),np.uint8)
hsv_disk = cv2.cvtColor(blurred,cv2.COLOR_BGR2HSV)
disk_threshed = cv2.inRange(hsv_disk, ORANGE_MIN, ORANGE_MAX)

The task is much easier when performed with the red plane only.

I guess there was problem with the thresholds for color segmentation, So the idea here was to generate a binary mask. By inspection your region of interest seems to be brighter than the other regions of input image, so thresholding can simply be done on a grayScale image to simplify the context. Note: You may change this step as per your requirement. After satisfying with the threshold output, you may use cv2.convexHull() to get the convex shape of your contour.
Also keep in mind to select the largest contour and ignore the small contours. The following code can be used to generate the required output:
import cv2
import numpy as np
# Loading the input_image
img = cv2.imread("/Users/anmoluppal/Downloads/3xGG4.jpg")
# Converting the input image to grayScale
img_gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
# Thresholding the image to get binary mask.
ret, img_thresh = cv2.threshold(img_gray, 145, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
# Dilating the mask image
kernel = np.ones((3,3),np.uint8)
dilation = cv2.dilate(img_thresh,kernel,iterations = 3)
# Getting all the contours
_, contours, __ = cv2.findContours(dilation, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_NONE)
# Finding the largest contour Id
largest_contour_area = 0
largest_contour_area_idx = 0
for i in xrange(len(contours)):
if (cv2.contourArea(contours[i]) > largest_contour_area):
largest_contour_area = cv2.contourArea(contours[i])
largest_contour_area_idx = i
# Get the convex Hull for the largest contour
hull = cv2.convexHull(contours[largest_contour_area_idx])
# Drawing the contours for debugging purposes.
img = cv2.drawContours(img, [hull], 0, [0, 255, 0])
cv2.imwrite("./garbage.png", img)