I have troubles extracting a tumor using a RT mask from a dicom image. Due to GDPR I am not allowed to share the dicom images even though they are anonymized. However I am allowed to share the images themself. I want to extract the drawn tumor from the CT images using the draw GTV stored as a RT structure using MATLAB.
Lets say that the file directory where my CT images are stored is called DicomCT and that the RT struct dicom file is called rtStruct.dcm.
I can read and visualize my CT images as follows:
V = dicomreadVolume(“DicomCT”);
V = squeeze(V);
volshow(V)
volume V - 3D CT image
I can load my rt structure using:
Info = dicominfo(“rtStruct.dcm”);
rtContours = dicomContours(Info);
I get the plot giving the different contours.
plotContour(rtContours)
Contours for the GTV of the CT image
I used this link for the information on how to create the mask such that I can apply it to the 3D CT image: https://nl.mathworks.com/help/images/create-and-display-3-d-mask-of-dicom-rt-contour-data.html#d124e5762
The dicom information tells mee the image should be 3mm slices, hence I took 3x3x3 for the referenceInfo.
referenceInfo = imref3d(size(V),3,3,3);
rtMask = createMask(rtContours, 1, referenceInfo)
When I plot my rtMask, I get a grey screen without any trace of the mask. I think that something is wrong with the way that I define the referenceInfo, but I have no idea how to fix it or what is wrong.
volshow(rtMask)
Volume plot of the RT mask
What would be the best way forward?
i was actually having some sort of similar problem to you a couple of days ago. I think you might have two possible problems (none of them your fault).
Your grey screen might be an error rendering that it's not showing because of how the actual volshow() script works. I found it does some things i don't understand with graphics memory and representing numeric type volumes vs logic volumes. I found this the hard way in my job PC where i only have intel HD graphics. Using
iptsetpref('VolumeViewerUseHardware',true)
for logical volumes worked fine for me. You an also test this by trying to replot the mask as double instead of logical by
rtMask = double(rtMask)
volshow(rtMask)
If it's not a rendering error caused by the interactions between your system and volshow() it might be an actual confusion and how the createMask and the actual reference info it needs (created by an actual bad explanation in the tutorial you just linked). Using pixel size info instead of actual axes limits can create partial visualization in segmentation or even missing it bc of scale. This nice person explained more elegantly in this post by using actual geometrical info of the dicom contours as limits.
https://es.mathworks.com/support/search.html/answers/1630195-how-to-convert-dicom-rt-structure-to-binary-mask.html?fq%5B%5D=asset_type_name:answer&fq%5B%5D=category:images/basic-import-and-export&page=1
basically use
plotContour(rtContours);
ax = gca;
referenceInfo = imref3d(size(V),ax.XLim,ax.YLim,ax.ZLim);
rtMask = createMask(rtContours, 1, referenceInfo)
In addition to your code and it might work.
I hope this could be of help to you.
I am currently recording on a single camera the images, one aside of the other one, of the same sample out of a microscope.
I have 2 issues with that, and I figured out that in post procesing with Matlab I could arrange these questions.
-First, the 2 images on the camera are supposed to have the same pixel size, or one is just a litle bigger than the other one, probably because of optical pathways. What is the adapted Matlab function or way to correlate the two images so they will have exactly the same pixel size in X and Y ?
Two images on same camera , one bigger or smaller compared to the other one
-Secondly, my sample is moving a litle during the recording ( while still staying in my field of view of course ). To make my analysis easier, it would be suitable that I could correct the images so the sample remain at the same place as in the first image, to perform calculations on it easier. What would be the adapted Matlab function or way to correct this movement in the image ?
Sample moving in the image on the camera
Sorry for the poor quality of my drawings !
Thank you very much for your advices and help.
First zero-pad the images to a sufficient degree, to get them both to double the size of the bigger one.
size_padding = max(size(fig1),size(fig2));
fig1_pad = padarray(fig1,size_padding-size(fig1),'post');
fig2_pad = padarray(fig2,size_padding-size(fig2),'post');
Assuming the sample is the only feature present in the images, the best way to proceed would be to use the xcorr2() function and find the lag corresponding to the maximum correlation, to get the space shift between the two images:
xc = xcorr2(fig1_pad,fig2_pad);
[max_cc, imax] = max(abs(xc(:)));
[ypeak, xpeak] = ind2sub(size(xc),imax(1));
corr_offset = [ (ypeak-size(fig2_pad,1)) (xpeak-size(fig2_pad,2)) ];
You then use circshift() to shift one of the images using the lag you obtained in the last step.
fig2_shift = circshift(fig2_pad,corr_offset);
You now have two images of the same size, where hopefully the sample is in the same position. If you want to remove the padding zeroes, crop the images to your liking with respect to the center using imcrop().
I'm trying to follow this tutorial http://www.mathworks.com/help/vision/examples/automatically-detect-and-recognize-text-in-natural-images.html to detect text in image using Matlab.
As a first step, the tutorial uses detectMSERFeatures to detect textual regions in the image. However, when I use this step on my image, the textual regions aren't detected.
Here is the snippet I'm using:
colorImage = imread('demo.png');
I = rgb2gray(colorImage);
% Detect MSER regions.
[mserRegions] = detectMSERFeatures(I, ...
'RegionAreaRange',[200 8000],'ThresholdDelta',4);
figure
imshow(I)
hold on
plot(mserRegions, 'showPixelList', true,'showEllipses',false)
title('MSER regions')
hold off
And here is the original image
and here is the image after the first step
[![enter image description here][2]][2]
Update
I've played around with parameters but none seem to detect textual region perfectly. Is there a better way to accomplish this than tweaking numbers? Tweaking the parameters won't work for wide array of images I might have.
Some parameters I've tried and their results:
[mserRegions] = detectMSERFeatures(I, ...
'RegionAreaRange',[30 100],'ThresholdDelta',12);
[mserRegions] = detectMSERFeatures(I, ...
'RegionAreaRange',[30 600],'ThresholdDelta',12);
Disclaimer: completely untested.
Try reducing MaxAreaVariation, since your text & background have very little variation (reduce false positives). You should be able to crank this down pretty far since it looks like the text was digitally generated (wouldn't work as well if it was a picture of text).
Try reducing the minimum value for RegionAreaRange, since small characters may be smaller than 200 pixels (increase true positives). At 200, you're probably filtering out most of your text.
Try increasing ThresholdDelta, since you know there is stark contrast between the text and background (reduce false positives). This won't be quite as effective as MaxAreaVariation for filtering, but should help a bit.
I'm using the Hopfield neural network to process a 400x400 satellite image.
However due to hardware issues I'm unable to process the entire image as a single image. Hence I've divided it into blocks of 50x50 each.
However after processing these blocks and combining them to form a single image, the borders of the blocks show up. How can I avoid this?
Maybe you can run the same algorithm on your image twice. do it once normally, then slightly offset your blocks and do it again. then average the two together you can still see the "checkerboard" but it's not as noticeable. You may have to play with the offset to get more desirable results. Also you an probably make the code smarter so that it doens't change the image size, but this was just a quick proof of concept.
I used histogram equalization as my algorithm. You can see the "avg of blocks" looks less "chessboard-like". I even did a difference between the whole image processing and the blocks. you can see the difference is much smaller between the avg and the whole image than for either of the two blocks
offset = 25;
fun = #(block_struct) histeq(block_struct.data)
%processes entire image, this is the baseline
a = histeq(im);
%does original block processing
b = blockproc(im,[125,125],fun);
%offsets the blocks and does processing again, please notice this
%changes the size of the image
c = blockproc(im(offset:end,offset:end),[125,125],fun);
%averages the two together (using the smaller image)
d= b(offset:end,offset:end)*.5+.5*c;
%the original image shows what processing the entire image loo
figure(1)
subplot(3,2,1:2);imshow(im);title('original')
subplot(3,2,3);imshow(a);title('operation on entire image')
subplot(3,2,4);imshow(d);title('avg of blocks')
subplot(3,2,5);imshow(b);title('blocks')
subplot(3,2,6);imshow(c);title('offset block')
figure(2);suptitle('difference between operation on entire image and block images')
subplot(2,2,1);imshow(a);title('operation on entire image')
subplot(2,2,2);imshow(abs(a(offset:end,offset:end)-d));title('avg of blocks')
subplot(2,2,3);imshow(abs(a-b));title('blocks')
subplot(2,2,4);imshow(abs(a(offset:end,offset:end)-c));title('offset block')
This question is related to my previous post Image Processing Algorithm in Matlab in stackoverflow, which I already got the results that I wanted to.
But now I am facing another problem, and getting some artefacts in the process images. In my original images (stack of 600 images) I can't see any artefacts, please see the original image from finger nail:
But in my 10 processed results I can see these lines:
I really don't know where they come from?
Also if they belong to the camera's sensor why can't I see them in my original images? Any idea?
Edit:
I have added the following code suggested by #Jonas. It reduces the artefact, but does not completely remove them.
%averaging of images
im = D{1}(:,:);
for i = 2:100
im = imadd(im,D{i}(:,:));
end
im = im/100;
imshow(im,[]);
for i=1:100
SD{i}(:,:)=imsubtract(D{i}(:,:),im(:,:))
end
#belisarius has asked for more images, so I am going to upload 4 images from my finger with speckle pattern and 4 images from black background size( 1280x1024 ):
And here is the black background:
Your artifacts are in fact present in your original image, although not visible.
Code in Mathematica:
i = Import#"http://i.stack.imgur.com/5hM3u.png"
EntropyFilter[i, 1]
The lines are faint, but you can see them by binarization with a very low level threshold:
Binarize[i, .001]
As for what is causing them, I can only speculate. I would start tracing from the camera output itself. Also, you may post two or three images "as they come straight from the camera" to allow us some experimenting.
The camera you're using is most likely has a CMOS chip. Since they have independent column (and possibly row) amplifiers, which may have slightly different electronic properties, you can get the signal from one column more amplified than from another.
Depending on the camera, these variability in column intensity can be stable. In that case, you're in luck: Take ~100 dark images (tape something over the lens), average them, and then subtract them from each image before running the analysis. This should make the lines disappear. If the lines do not disappear (or if there are additional lines), use the post-processing scheme proposed by Amro to remove the lines after binarization.
EDIT
Here's how you'd do the background subtraction, assuming that you have taken 100 dark images and stored them in a cell array D with 100 elements:
% take the mean; convert to double for safety reasons
meanImg = mean( double( cat(3,D{:}) ), 3);
% then you cans subtract the mean from the original (non-dark-frame) image
correctedImage = rawImage - meanImg; %(maybe you need to re-cast the meanImg first)
Here is an answer that in opinion will remove the lines more gently than the above mentioned methods:
im = imread('image.png'); % Original image
imFiltered = im; % The filtered image will end up here
imChanged = false(size(im));% To document the filter performance
% 1)
% Compute the histgrams for each column in the lower part of the image
% (where the columns are most clear) and compute the mean and std each
% bin in the histogram.
histograms = hist(double(im(501:520,:)),0:255);
colMean = mean(histograms,2);
colStd = std(histograms,0,2);
% 2)
% Now loop though each gray level above zero and...
for grayLevel = 1:255
% Find the columns where the number of 'graylevel' pixels is larger than
% mean_n_graylevel + 3*std_n_graylevel). - That is columns that contains
% statistically 'many' pixel with the current 'graylevel'.
lineColumns = find(histograms(grayLevel+1,:)>colMean(grayLevel+1)+3*colStd(grayLevel+1));
% Now remove all graylevel pixels in lineColumns in the original image
if(~isempty(lineColumns))
for col = lineColumns
imFiltered(:,col) = im(:,col).*uint8(~(im(:,col)==grayLevel));
imChanged(:,col) = im(:,col)==grayLevel;
end
end
end
imshow(imChanged)
figure,imshow(imFiltered)
Here is the image after filtering
And this shows the pixels affected by the filter
You could use some sort of morphological opening to remove the thin vertical lines:
img = imread('image.png');
SE = strel('line',2,0);
img2 = imdilate(imerode(img,SE),SE);
subplot(121), imshow(img)
subplot(122), imshow(img2)
The structuring element used was:
>> SE.getnhood
ans =
1 1 1
Without really digging into your image processing, I can think of two reasons for this to happen:
The processing introduced these artifacts. This is unlikely, but it's an option. Check your algorithm and your code.
This is a side-effect because your processing reduced the dynamic range of the picture, just like quantization. So in fact, these artifacts may have already been in the picture itself prior to the processing, but they couldn't be noticed because their level was very close to the background level.
As for the source of these artifacts, it might even be the camera itself.
This is a VERY interesting question. I used to deal with this type of problem with live IR imagers (video systems). We actually had algorithms built into the cameras to deal with this problem prior to the user ever seeing or getting their hands on the image. Couple questions:
1) are you dealing with RAW images or are you dealing with already pre-processed grayscale (or RGB) images?
2) what is your ultimate goal with these images. Is the goal to simply get rid of the lines regardless of the quality in the rest of the image that results, or is the point to preserve the absolute best image quality. Are you to perform other processing afterwards?
I agree that those lines are most likely in ALL of your images. There are 2 reasons for those lines ever showing up in an image, one would be in a bright scene where OP AMPs for columns get saturated, thus causing whole columns of your image to get the brightest value camera can output. Another reason could be bad OP AMPs or ADCs (Analog to Digital Converters) themselves (Most likely not an ADC as normally there is essentially 1 ADC for th whole sensor, which would make the whole image bad, not your case). The saturation case is actually much more difficult to deal with (and I don't think this is your problem). Note: Too much saturation on a sensor can cause bad pixels and columns to arise in your sensor (which is why they say never to point your camera at the sun). The bad column problem can be dealt with. Above in another answer, someone had you averaging images. While this may be good to find out where the bad columns (or bad single pixels, or the noise matrix of your sensor) are (and you would have to average pointing the camera at black, white, essentially solid colors), it isn't the correct answer to get rid of them. By the way, what I am explaining with the black and white and averaging, and finding bad pixels, etc... is called calibrating your sensor.
OK, so saying you are able to get this calibration data, then you WILL be able to find out which columns are bad, even single pixels.
If you have this data, one way that you could erase the columns out is to:
for each bad column
for each pixel (x, y) on the bad column
pixel(x, y) = Average(pixel(x+1,y),pixel(x+1,y-1),pixel(x+1,y+1),
pixel(x-1,y),pixel(x-1,y-1),pixel(x-1,y+1))
What this essentially does is replace the bad pixel with a new pixel which is the average of the 6 remaining good pixels around it. The above is an over-simplified version of an algorithm. There are certainly cases where a singly bad pixel could be right next the bad column and shouldn't be used for averaging, or two or three bad columns right next to each other. One could imagine that you would calculate the values for a bad column, then consider that column good in order to move on to the next bad column, etc....
Now, the reason I asked about the RAW versus B/W or RGB. If you were processing a RAW, depending on the build of the sensor itself, it could be that only one sub-pixel (if you will) of the bayer filtered image sensor has the bad OP AMP. If you could detect this, then you wouldn't necessarily have to throw out the other good sub-pixel's data. Secondarily, if you are using an RGB sensor, to take a grayscale photo, and you shot it in RAW, then you may be able to calculate your own grayscale pixels. Many sensors when giving back a grayscale image when using an RGB sensor, will simply pass back the Green pixel as the overall pixel. This is due to the fact that it really serves as the luminescence of an image. This is why most image sensors implement 2 green sub-pixels for every r or g sub-pixel. If this is what they are doing (not ALL sensors do this) then you may have better luck getting rid of just the bad channel column, and performing your own grayscale conversion using.
gray = (0.299*r + 0.587*g + 0.114*b)
Apologies for the long winded answer, but I hope this is still informational to someone :-)
Since you can not see the lines in the original image, they are either there with low intensity difference in comparison with original range of image, or added by your processing algorithm.
The shape of the disturbance hints to the first option... (Unless you have an algorithm that processes each row separately.)
It seems like your sensor's columns are not uniform, try taking a picture without the finger (background only) using the same exposure (and other) settings, then subtracting it from the photo of the finger (prior to other processing). (Make sure the background is uniform before taking both images.)