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:

How to detect a precise rectangle in a photo opencv

I was using this code to detect the rectangle on the photo, at first it was working well, untill i realized that i would have an object that is also a square in the middle :
Question:
How can i properly detect the 4 corners like on the first result picture without detecting the corner of the thing in the middle of the square. Thanks a lot.
Code:
import numpy as np
import cv2
img = cv2.imread('Photos/lastBoard.png')
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
canny = cv2.Canny(gray, 100, 200)
corners = cv2.goodFeaturesToTrack(gray, 25, 0.01, 50)
corner_list = []
for corner in corners:
x, y = corner.ravel()
if(y < 700 and (50 < x < 800 )):
corner_list.append([int(x), int(y)])
cv2.circle(img, (x, y), 5, (36, 255, 12), -1)
cv2.imshow("yo", img)
cv2.waitKey(0)

My man, it breaks my heart you aren't using the techniques and processing we covered in your last question. You have already plenty of functions you could re-use. The rectangle you are trying to segment has a unique color (kind of green) and has a defined area and aspect ratio! Look all the things you have on the table, they are smaller than the rectangle! Plus, the rectangle is almost a square! That means that its aspect ratio is close to 1.0. If you somehow segment the rectangle, approximating its corners should be relativity easy.
This is valuable info, because it allows you to trace your action plan. I see you are using cv2.goodFeaturesToTrack to detect the corners of everything. That's OK, but it could be simplified. I propose a plan of action very similar to last time:
Try to segment the rectangle using its color, let's compute an
HSV-based mask
Let's clean the mask from noise using an area filter and some morphology
Find contours - we are looking for the biggest green contour, the rectangle.
The contour of interest has defined features. Use the area and aspect ratio to filter garbage contours.
Once you have the contour/blob of interest, approximate its corners.
Let's see the code:
# imports:
import numpy as np
import cv2
# image path
path = "D://opencvImages//"
fileName = "table1.jpg"
# Reading an image in default mode:
inputImage = cv2.imread(path + fileName)
inputCopy = inputImage.copy()
# The HSV mask values:
lowerValues = np.array([58, 151, 25])
upperValues = np.array([86, 255, 75])
# Convert the image to HSV:
hsvImage = cv2.cvtColor(inputImage, cv2.COLOR_BGR2HSV)
# Create the HSV mask
mask = cv2.inRange(hsvImage, lowerValues, upperValues)
The first steps aim to create the HSV mask. Very similar to last time, I've defined the HSV range of interest already and applied exactly the same stuff as before. You could (and should) explore more exotic techniques latter, but let's stick with what we know works for the time being, as the project surely is due soon. This is the result:
You see how the mask is pretty nice already? Only the green puck and the rectangle survived the thresholding. It doesn't matter that the rectangle is not complete, because we're gonna approximate its contour with a bounding rectangle! Alright, let's clean this bad boy a little bit better. Use a filterArea (this is exactly the same function we saw last time) and then a closing (dilate followed by erode) just to get a nice mask:
# Run a minimum area filter:
minArea = 50
mask = areaFilter(minArea, mask)
# Pre-process mask:
kernelSize = 3
structuringElement = cv2.getStructuringElement(cv2.MORPH_RECT, (kernelSize, kernelSize))
iterations = 2
mask = cv2.morphologyEx(mask, cv2.MORPH_DILATE, structuringElement, None, None, iterations, cv2.BORDER_REFLECT101)
mask = cv2.morphologyEx(mask, cv2.MORPH_ERODE, structuringElement, None, None, iterations, cv2.BORDER_REFLECT101)
This is the filtered mask, the noise is mostly gone:
Now, let's find contours and filtered based on area and aspect ratio, just like last time. The parameters, however, are different, because our target is not the plucks, but the rectangle:
# Find the big contours/blobs on the filtered image:
contours, hierarchy = cv2.findContours(mask, cv2.RETR_CCOMP, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
# Store the poly approximation and bound
contoursPoly = [None] * len(contours)
# Store the corners of the square here:
detectedCorners = []
# Look for the outer bounding boxes:
for _, c in enumerate(contours):
# Approximate the contour to a polygon:
contoursPoly = cv2.approxPolyDP(c, 3, True)
# Convert the polygon to a bounding rectangle:
boundRect = cv2.boundingRect(contoursPoly)
# Get the bounding rect's data:
rectX = boundRect[0]
rectY = boundRect[1]
rectWidth = boundRect[2]
rectHeight = boundRect[3]
# Calculate the rect's area:
rectArea = rectWidth * rectHeight
# Calculate the aspect ratio:
aspectRatio = rectWidth / rectHeight
delta = abs(1.0 - aspectRatio)
# Set the min threshold values to identify the
# blob of interest:
minArea = 2500
epsilon = 0.2
Alright, so far so good, I hope. As you see I approximated the contour to a 4-vertex polygon and then computed its bounding rectangle. This approximation should fit very nicely to our blob of interest. Now, apply the contour filter and use the bounding rectangle data to approximate the corners. I approximate each corner, one by one, and store them in the
detectedCorners array. Then, we can draw 'em. Here, still inside the for loop:
# Is this bounding rectangle we
# are looking for?
if rectArea > minArea and delta < epsilon:
# Compute the corners/vertices:
# Corner 1 (top left)
corner1 = (rectX, rectY)
detectedCorners.append(corner1)
# Corner 2 (top right)
corner2 = (rectX + rectWidth, rectY)
detectedCorners.append(corner2)
# Corner 3 (bottom left)
corner3 = (rectX, rectY + rectHeight)
detectedCorners.append(corner3)
# Corner 4 (bottom right)
corner4 = (rectX + rectWidth, rectY + rectHeight)
detectedCorners.append(corner4)
# Draw the corner points:
for p in detectedCorners:
color = (0, 0, 255)
cv2.circle(inputCopy, (p[0], p[1]), 5, color, -1)
cv2.imshow("Square Corners", inputCopy)
cv2.waitKey(0)
Here are the results for both images. The approximated corners are the red dots:
Here's the definition and implementation of the areaFilter function:
def areaFilter(minArea, inputImage):
# Perform an area filter on the binary blobs:
componentsNumber, labeledImage, componentStats, componentCentroids = \
cv2.connectedComponentsWithStats(inputImage, connectivity=4)
# Get the indices/labels of the remaining components based on the area stat
# (skip the background component at index 0)
remainingComponentLabels = [i for i in range(1, componentsNumber) if componentStats[i][4] >= minArea]
# Filter the labeled pixels based on the remaining labels,
# assign pixel intensity to 255 (uint8) for the remaining pixels
filteredImage = np.where(np.isin(labeledImage, remainingComponentLabels) == True, 255, 0).astype('uint8')
return filteredImage

Python OpenCV - customizing mask

I am having a image here. The region within the yellow lines is my region of interest, as shown in this image here, which is also one of my objective. Here's my planning / steps:
Denoise, color filtering, masking and Canny edging (DONE)
Coordinates of the edges (DONE)
Select coordinates of certain vertices, for example
Draw polygon with those vertices' coordinates
Here's the code:
import cv2
import numpy as np
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
frame = cv2.imread('realtest.jpg')
denoisedFrame = cv2.fastNlMeansDenoisingColored(frame, None, 10, 10, 7, 21)
HSVframe = cv2.cvtColor(denoisedFrame, cv2.COLOR_BGR2HSV)
lower_yellowColor = np.array([15,105,105])
upper_yellowColor = np.array([25,255,255])
whiteMask = cv2.inRange(HSVframe, lower_yellowColor, upper_yellowColor)
maskedFrame = cv2.bitwise_and(denoisedFrame, denoisedFrame, mask=whiteMask)
grayFrame = cv2.cvtColor(maskedFrame, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
gaussBlurFrame = cv2.GaussianBlur(grayFrame, (5,5), 0)
edgedFrame = cv2.Canny(grayFrame, 100, 200)
#Coordinates of each white pixels that make up the edges
ans = []
for y in range(0, edgedFrame.shape[0]):
for x in range(0, edgedFrame.shape[1]):
if edgedFrame[y, x] != 0:
ans = ans + [[x, y]]
ans = np.array(ans)
#print(ans.shape)
#print(ans[0:100, :])
cv2.imshow("edged", edgedFrame)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
As you can see, I have successfully done step number (2) in getting the coordinates of each white pixels that make the edges. Whereas for the next step, step number (3), I am stuck. I have tried the coding here, but getting error that says 'ValueError: too many values to unpack (expected 2)'.
Please help teaching me in finding good vertices for constructing a polygon that is as close to the yellow lines as possible.

I have split the answer into two parts
Part 1: Finding the good vertices to construct a polygon
The required vertices around an image containing edges can be done using OpenCV's inbuilt cv2.findContours() function. It returns the image with contours, vertices of the contours and the hierarchy of the contours.
One can find vertices of contours in two ways:
cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_NONE plots ALL the coordinates(boundary points) on each contour
cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE plots ONLY the most necessary coordinates on each contour. It doesn't store all the points. Only the most required coordinates that best represent the contours are stored.
In your case option 2 can be opted. After finding the edges you can do the following:
image, contours, hier = cv2.findContours(edgedFrame, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL,cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
contours contains the vertices of every contour in the image edgedFrame
Part 2: Constructing the polygon
Opencv has an in-built function for this as well cv2.convexHull() After finding those points you can draw them using cv2.drawContours().
for cnt in contours:
hull = cv2.convexHull(cnt)
cv2.drawContours(frame, [hull], -1, (0, 255, 0), 2)
cv2.imshow("Polygon", frame)
You can obtain a better approximation of the desired edge by doing some more pre-processing while creating the mask

Identifying the densest region/cluster

I have an image like so:
I would like to automatically identify the dense white box area in the top left and then fill it and black out the rest of image. Producing something like this:
Essentially, I just want to return the co-ordinates of the densest cluster. I have tried ad-hoc methods such as erosion, dilation and binary closing but they do not quite suite my needs. I'm not sure if I could use k-means here? Looking for an efficient method, any help is appreciated.

You could erode the image a little bit more, to remove more of the noise, and then find the contours and filter them by area. Here is what I would use (not tested):
kernel = np.ones((2, 2), np.uint8)
img = cv2.erode(img, kernel, iterations = 2)
#Finding contours of white square:
_, conts, hierarchy = cv2.findContours(img, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL , cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
for cnt in conts:
area = cv2.contourArea(cnt)
#filter more noise
if area > 200: # optimize this number
x1, y1, w, h = cv2.boundingRect(cnt)
x2 = x1 + w # (x1, y1) = top-left vertex
y2 = y1 + h # (x2, y2) = bottom-right vertex
rect = cv2.rectangle(img, (x1, y1), (x2, y2), (255,0,0), 2)

One right approach here would be to apply a large square averaging filter. If you know approximately the size of the box you're looking for, then match that size with the filter. After applying this filter, the largest pixel value in the image will be at the middle of the densest region. Let's call this point p.
Next, apply segmentation and connected component labeling to your original image. From your example image, it seems that the box you're looking for is connected. You might want to apply some morphological operations to make sure it's connected. You can also paint a reasonably-sizes blob centered at point p, it'll connect lots of small regions that together form a dense area.
Next, remove all connected components except the one containing point p. You can do this by finding the label at pixel p, and comparing all pixels in the labeled image for equality with that label.
This should leave you a connected, compact region. You can find the bounding box of this region, and paint it on your image, if you really want to enforce that the found area be a box.

OpenCV - Detecting circular shapes

I have some code which detects circular shapes but I am unable to understand how it works.
From this code:
How can i find the radius and center point of the circle?
What is the behaviour of `cv2.approxPolyDP' for detecting circles?
Now find the contours in the segmented mask
contours, hierarchy = cv2.findContours(mask.copy(), cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_NONE)
Sorting the contours w.r.t contour rect X
contours.sort(key = lambda x:cv2.boundingRect(x)[0])
for contour in contours:
approx = cv2.approxPolyDP(contour, 0.01*cv2.arcLength(contour,True), True)
if len(approx) > 8:
# Find the bounding rect of contour.
contour_bounding_rect = cv2.boundingRect(contour)
mid_point = contour_bounding_rect[0] + contour_bounding_rect[2]/2, contour_bounding_rect[1] + contour_bounding_rect[3]/2
print mid_point[1]/single_element_height, ", ",

So I have figured out the answer to your first question: determining the center and radius of circles in the image.
Initially I am finding all the contours present in the image. Then using a for loop, I found the center and radius using cv2.minEnclosingCircle for every contour in the image. I printed them in the console screen.
contours,hierarchy = cv2.findContours(thresh,2,1)
print len(contours)
cnt = contours
for i in range (len(cnt)):
(x,y),radius = cv2.minEnclosingCircle(cnt[i])
center = (int(x),int(y))
radius = int(radius)
cv2.circle(img,center,radius,(0,255,0),2)
print 'Circle' + str(i) + ': Center =' + str(center) + 'Radius =' + str(radius)
To answer your second question on cv2.approxPolyDP(); this function draws an approximate contour around the object in the image based on a parameter called 'epsilon'. Higher the value of 'epsilon', the contour is roughly approximated. For a lower value of epsilon, the contour grazes almost every edge of the object in the image. Visit THIS PAGE for a better understanding.
Hope this helped!! :)

Don't think approxPolyDP is the right way to go here.
If you have an image where you only have circles and you want to find center and radius, try minEnclosingCircle()
If you have an image where you have various shapes and you want to find the circles, try Hough transform (may take a long time) or fitEllipse() where you check if the bounding box it returns is square.
See documentation for both these functions