Develop Reference

Extract most central area in a Binary Image

I am processing binary images, and was previously using this code to find the largest area in the binary image:
# Use the hue value to convert to binary
thresh = 20
thresh, thresh_img = cv2.threshold(h, thresh, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
cv2.imshow('thresh', thresh_img)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
# Finding Contours
# Use a copy of the image since findContours alters the image
contours, _ = cv2.findContours(thresh_img.copy(), cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_NONE)
#Extract the largest area
c = max(contours, key=cv2.contourArea)
This code isn't really doing what I need it to do, now I think it would better to extract the most central area in the binary image.
Binary Image
Largest Image
This is currently what the code is extracting, but I am hoping to get the central circle in the first binary image extracted.

OpenCV comes with a point-polygon test function (for contours). It even gives a signed distance, if you ask for that.
I'll find the contour that is closest to the center of the picture. That may be a contour actually overlapping the center of the picture.
Timings, on my quadcore from 2012, give or take a millisecond:
findContours: ~1 millisecond
all pointPolygonTests and argmax: ~1 millisecond
mask = cv.imread("fkljm.png", cv.IMREAD_GRAYSCALE)
(height, width) = mask.shape
ret, mask = cv.threshold(mask, 128, 255, cv.THRESH_BINARY) # required because the sample picture isn't exactly clean
# get contours
contours, hierarchy = cv.findContours(mask, cv.RETR_LIST | cv.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
center = (np.array([width, height]) - 1) / 2
# find contour closest to center of picture
distances = [
cv.pointPolygonTest(contour, center, True) # looking for most positive (inside); negative is outside
for contour in contours
]
iclosest = np.argmax(distances)
print("closest contour is", iclosest, "with distance", distances[iclosest])
# draw closest contour
canvas = cv.cvtColor(mask, cv.COLOR_GRAY2BGR)
cv.drawContours(image=canvas, contours=[contours[iclosest]], contourIdx=-1, color=(0, 255, 0), thickness=5)
closest contour is 45 with distance 65.19202405202648
a cv.floodFill() on the center point can also quickly yield a labeling on that blob... assuming the mask is positive there. Otherwise, there needs to be search.
(cx, cy) = center.astype(int)
assert mask[cy,cx], "floodFill not applicable"
# trying cv.floodFill on the image center
mask2 = mask >> 1 # turns everything else gray
cv.floodFill(image=mask2, mask=None, seedPoint=center.astype(int), newVal=255)
# use (mask2 == 255) to identify that blob
This also takes less than a millisecond.
Some practically faster approaches might involve a pyramid scheme (low-res versions of the mask) to quickly identify areas of the picture that are candidates for an exact test (distance/intersection).
Test target pixel. Hit (positive)? Done.
Calculate low-res mask. Per block, if any pixel is positive, block is positive.
Find positive blocks, sort by distance, examine closer all those that are within sqrt(2) * blocksize of the best distance.

There are several ways you define "most central." I chose to define it as the region with the closest distance to the point you're searching for. If the point is inside the region, then that distance will be zero.
I also chose to do this with a pixel-based approach rather than a polygon-based approach, like you're doing with findContours().
Here's a step-by-step breakdown of what this code is doing.
Load the image, put it into grayscale, and threshold it. You're already doing these things.
Identify connected components of the image. Connected components are places where there are white pixels which are directly connected to other white pixels. This breaks up the image into regions.
Using np.argwhere(), convert a true/false mask into an array of coordinates.
For each coordinate, compute the Euclidean distance between that point and search_point.
Find the minimum within each region.
Across all regions, find the smallest distance.
import cv2
import numpy as np
img = cv2.imread('test197_img.png')
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
_, thresh_img = cv2.threshold(gray,127,255,cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
n_groups, comp_grouped = cv2.connectedComponents(thresh_img)
components = []
search_point = [600, 150]
for i in range(1, n_groups):
mask = (comp_grouped == i)
component_coords = np.argwhere(mask)[:, ::-1]
min_distance = np.sqrt(((component_coords - search_point) ** 2).sum(axis=1)).min()
components.append({
'mask': mask,
'min_distance': min_distance,
})
closest = min(components, key=lambda x: x['min_distance'])['mask']
Output:

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:

Bulk removing unwanted parts of images

I have downloaded a number of images (1000) from a website but they each have a black and white ruler running along 1 or 2 edges and some have these catalogue number tickets. I need these elements removed, the ruler at the very least.
Example images of coins:
The images all have the ruler in slightly different places so i cant just preform the same crop on them.
So I tried to remove the black and replace it with white using this code
from PIL import Image
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
im = Image.open('image-0.jpg')
im = im.convert('RGBA')
data = np.array(im) # "data" is a height x width x 4 numpy array
red, green, blue, alpha = data.T # Temporarily unpack the bands for readability
# Replace black with white
black_areas = (red < 150) & (blue < 150) & (green < 150)
data[..., :-1][black_areas.T] = (255, 255, 255) # Transpose back needed
im2 = Image.fromarray(data)
im2.show()
but it pretty much just removed half the coin as well:
I was having a read of some posts on opencv but though I'd see if there was a simpler way I'd missed first.

So I have taken a look at your problem and I have found a solution for your two images you provided, I hope it works for you other images as well but it is always hard to tell as it can be different on an individual basis. This solution is using OpenCV for preprocessing and contour detection to get the 2nd and 3rd largest elements in your picture (largest is the bounding box around the edges) which should be your coins. Then I create a box around those two items and add some padding before I crop to size.
So we start off with preprocessing:
import numpy as np
import cv2
img = cv2.imread(r'<PATH TO YOUR IMAGE>')
img = cv2.resize(img, None, fx=3, fy=3)
imgray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
blur = cv2.GaussianBlur(imgray, (5, 5), 0)
ret, thresh = cv2.threshold(blur, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY+cv2.THRESH_OTSU)
Still rather basic, we make the image bigger so it is easier to detect contours, then we turn it into grayscale, blur it and apply thresholding to it so we turn all grey values either white or black. This then gives us the following image:
We now do contour detection, get the areas around our contours and sort them by the biggest area. Then we drop the biggest one as it is the box around the whole image and take the 2nd and 3rd biggest. And then get the x,y,w,h values we are interested in.
contours, hierarchy = cv2.findContours(
thresh, cv2.RETR_TREE, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
areas = []
for cnt in contours:
area = cv2.contourArea(cnt)
areas.append((area, cnt))
areas.sort(key=lambda x: x[0], reverse=True)
areas.pop(0)
x, y, w, h = cv2.boundingRect(areas[0][1])
x2, y2, w2, h2 = cv2.boundingRect(areas[1][1])
If we draw a rectangle around those contours:
Now we take those coordinates and create a box around both of them. This might need some minor adjusting as I just quickly took the bigger width of the two and not the corresponding one for the right coin but since I added extra padding it should be fine in most cases. And finally crop to size:
pad = 15
img = img[(min(y, y2) - pad) : (max(y, y2) + max(h, h2) + pad),
(min(x, x2) - pad) : (max(x, x2) + max(w, w2) + pad)]
I hope this helps you to understand how you could achieve what you want, I tried it on both your images and it worked well for them. It might need some adjustments and depending on how your other images look the simple approach of taking the two biggest objects (apart from image bounding box) might be turned into something more sophisticated to detect the cricular shapes or something along those lines. Alternatively you could try to detect the rulers and crop from their position inwards. You will have to decide after you have done this on more example images in your dataset.

If you're looking for a robust solution, you should try something like Max Kaha's response, since it'll provide you with greater fine tuning.
Since the rulers tend to be left with just a little bit of text after your "black to white" filter, a quick solution is to use erosion followed by a dilation to create a mask for your images, and then apply the mask to the original image.
Pillow offers that with the ImageFilter class. Here's your code with a few modifications that'll achieve that:
from PIL import Image, ImageFilter
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
WHITE = 255, 255, 255
input_image = Image.open('image.png')
input_image = input_image.convert('RGBA')
input_data = np.array(input_image) # "data" is a height x width x 4 numpy array
red, green, blue, alpha = input_data.T # Temporarily unpack the bands for readability
# Replace black with white
thresh = 30
black_areas = (red < thresh) & (blue < thresh) & (green < thresh)
input_data[..., :-1][black_areas.T] = WHITE # Transpose back needed
erosion_factor = 5
# dilation is bigger to avoid cropping the objects of interest
dilation_factor = 11
erosion_filter = ImageFilter.MaxFilter(erosion_factor)
dilation_filter = ImageFilter.MinFilter(dilation_factor)
eroded = Image.fromarray(input_data).filter(erosion_filter)
dilated = eroded.filter(dilation_filter)
mask_threshold = 220
# the mask is black on regions to be hidden
mask = dilated.convert('L').point(lambda x: 255 if x < mask_threshold else 0)
# create base image
output_image = Image.new('RGBA', input_image.size, WHITE)
# paste only the desired regions
output_image.paste(input_image, mask=mask)
output_image.show()
You should also play around with the black to white threshold and the erosion/dilation factors to try and find the best fit for most of your images.

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

Copy a part of an image in opencv and python

I'm trying to split an image into several sub-images with opencv by identifying templates of the original image and then copy the regions where I matched those templates. I'm a TOTAL newbie to opencv! I've identified the sub-images using:
result = cv2.matchTemplate(img, template, cv2.TM_CCORR_NORMED)
After some cleanup I get a list of tuples called points in which I iterate to show the rectangles. tw and th is the template width and height respectively.
for pt in points:
re = cv2.rectangle(img, pt, (pt[0] + tw, pt[1] + th), 0, 2)
print('%s, %s' % (str(pt[0]), str(pt[1])))
count+=1
What I would like to accomplish is to save the octagons (https://dl.dropbox.com/u/239592/region01.png) into separated files.
How can I do this? I've read something about contours but I'm not sure how to use it. Ideally I would like to contour the octagon.
Thanks a lot for your help!

If template matching is working for you, stick to it. For instance, I considered the following template:
Then, we can pre-process the input in order to make it a binary one and discard small components. After this step, the template matching is performed. Then it is a matter of filtering the matches by means of discarding close ones (I've used a dummy method for that, so if there are too many matches you could see it taking some time). After we decide which points are far apart (and thus identify different hexagons), we can do minor adjusts to them in the following manner:
Sort by y-coordinate;
If two adjacent items start at a y-coordinate that is too close, then set them both to the same y-coord.
Now you can sort this point list in an appropriate order such that the crops are done in raster order. The cropping part is easily achieved using slicing provided by numpy.
import sys
import cv2
import numpy
outbasename = 'hexagon_%02d.png'
img = cv2.imread(sys.argv[1])
template = cv2.cvtColor(cv2.imread(sys.argv[2]), cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
theight, twidth = template.shape[:2]
# Binarize the input based on the saturation and value.
hsv = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2HSV)
saturation = hsv[:,:,1]
value = hsv[:,:,2]
value[saturation > 35] = 255
value = cv2.threshold(value, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]
# Pad the image.
value = cv2.copyMakeBorder(255 - value, 3, 3, 3, 3, cv2.BORDER_CONSTANT, value=0)
# Discard small components.
img_clean = numpy.zeros(value.shape, dtype=numpy.uint8)
contours, _ = cv2.findContours(value, cv2.RETR_LIST, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
for i, c in enumerate(contours):
area = cv2.contourArea(c)
if area > 500:
cv2.drawContours(img_clean, contours, i, 255, 2)
def closest_pt(a, pt):
if not len(a):
return (float('inf'), float('inf'))
d = a - pt
return a[numpy.argmin((d * d).sum(1))]
match = cv2.matchTemplate(img_clean, template, cv2.TM_CCORR_NORMED)
# Filter matches.
threshold = 0.8
dist_threshold = twidth / 1.5
loc = numpy.where(match > threshold)
ptlist = numpy.zeros((len(loc[0]), 2), dtype=int)
count = 0
print "%d matches" % len(loc[0])
for pt in zip(*loc[::-1]):
cpt = closest_pt(ptlist[:count], pt)
dist = ((cpt[0] - pt[0]) ** 2 + (cpt[1] - pt[1]) ** 2) ** 0.5
if dist > dist_threshold:
ptlist[count] = pt
count += 1
# Adjust points (could do for the x coords too).
ptlist = ptlist[:count]
view = ptlist.ravel().view([('x', int), ('y', int)])
view.sort(order=['y', 'x'])
for i in xrange(1, ptlist.shape[0]):
prev, curr = ptlist[i - 1], ptlist[i]
if abs(curr[1] - prev[1]) < 5:
y = min(curr[1], prev[1])
curr[1], prev[1] = y, y
# Crop in raster order.
view.sort(order=['y', 'x'])
for i, pt in enumerate(ptlist, start=1):
cv2.imwrite(outbasename % i,
img[pt[1]-2:pt[1]+theight-2, pt[0]-2:pt[0]+twidth-2])
print 'Wrote %s' % (outbasename % i)
If you want only the contours of the hexagons, then crop on img_clean instead of img (but then it is pointless to sort the hexagons in raster order).
Here is a representation of the different regions that would be cut for your two examples without modifying the code above:

I am sorry, I didn't understand from your question on how do you relate matchTemplate and Contours.
Anyway, below is a small technique using contours. It is on the assumption that your other images are also like the one you provided. I am not sure if it works with your other images. But I think it would help to get a startup. Try this yourself and make necessary adjustments and modifications.
What I did :
1 - I needed the edge of octagons . So Thresholded Image using Otsu and apply dilation and erosion (or use any method you like that works well for all your images, beware of the edges in left edge of image).
2 - Then found contours (More about contours : http://goo.gl/r0ID0
3 - For each contours, find its convex hull, find its area(A) & perimeter(P)
4 - For a perfect octagon, P*P/A = 13.25 approximately. I used it here and cut it and saved it.
5 - You can see cropping it also removes some edges of octagon. If you want it, adjust the cropping dimension.
Code :
import cv2
import numpy as np
img = cv2.imread('region01.png')
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img,cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
ret,thresh = cv2.threshold(gray,0,255,cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV+cv2.THRESH_OTSU)
thresh = cv2.dilate(thresh,None,iterations = 2)
thresh = cv2.erode(thresh,None)
contours,hierarchy = cv2.findContours(thresh,cv2.RETR_LIST,cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
number = 0
for cnt in contours:
hull = cv2.convexHull(cnt)
area = cv2.contourArea(hull)
P = cv2.arcLength(hull,True)
if ((area != 0) and (13<= P**2/area <= 14)):
#cv2.drawContours(img,[hull],0,255,3)
x,y,w,h = cv2.boundingRect(hull)
number = number + 1
roi = img[y:y+h,x:x+w]
cv2.imshow(str(number),roi)
cv2.imwrite("1"+str(number)+".jpg",roi)
cv2.imshow('img',img)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
Those 6 octagons will be stored as separate files.
Hope it helps !!!