How to find Orientation of axis of contour in matlab? - matlab

Question

I want to find Orientation, MajorAxisLengthand MinorAxisLength of contour which is plotted with below code.
clear
[x1 , x2] = meshgrid(linspace(-10,10,100),linspace(-10,10,100));
mu = [1,3];
sigm = [2,0;0,2];
xx_size = length(mu);
tem_matrix = ones(size(x1));
x_mesh= cell(1,xx_size);
for i = 1 : xx_size
x_mesh{i} = tem_matrix * mu(i);
end
x_mesh= {x1,x2};
temp_mesh = [];
for i = 1 : xx_size
temp_mesh = [temp_mesh x_mesh{i}(:)];
end
Z = mvnpdf(temp_mesh,mu,sigm);
z_plat = reshape(Z,size(x1));
figure;contour(x1, x2, z_plat,3, 'LineWidth', 2,'color','m');
% regionprops(z_plat,'Centroid','Orientation','MajorAxisLength','MinorAxisLength');
In my opinion, I may have to use regionprops command but I don't know how to do this. I want to find direction of axis of contour and plot something like this
How can I do this task? Thanks very much for your help

Answer 1

Rather than trying to process the graphical output of contour, I would instead recommend using contourc to compute the ContourMatrix and then use the x/y points to estimate the major and minor axes lengths as well as the orientation (for this I used this file exchange submission)
That would look something like the following. Note that I have modified the inputs to contourc as the first two inputs should be the vector form and not the output of meshgrid.
% Compute the three contours for your data
contourmatrix = contourc(linspace(-10,10,100), linspace(-10,10,100), z_plat, 3);
% Create a "pointer" to keep track of where we are in the output
start = 1;
count = 1;
% Now loop through each contour
while start < size(contourmatrix, 2)
value = contourmatrix(1, start);
nPoints = contourmatrix(2, start);
contour_points = contourmatrix(:, start + (1:nPoints));
% Now fit an ellipse using the file exchange
ellipsedata(count) = fit_ellipse(contour_points(1,:), contour_points(2,:));
% Increment the start pointer
start = start + nPoints + 1;
count = count + 1;
end
orientations = [ellipsedata.phi];
% 0 0 0
major_length = [ellipsedata.long_axis];
% 4.7175 3.3380 2.1539
minor_length = [ellipsedata.short_axis];
% 4.7172 3.3378 2.1532
As you can see, the contours are actually basically circles and therefore the orientation is zero and the major and minor axis lengths are almost equal. The reason that they look like ellipses in your post is because your x and y axes are scaled differently. To fix this, you can call axis equal
figure;contour(x1, x2, z_plat,3, 'LineWidth', 2,'color','m');
axis equal

Answer 2

Thank you #Suever. It help me to do my idea.
I add some line to code:
clear
[X1 , X2] = meshgrid(linspace(-10,10,100),linspace(-10,10,100));
mu = [-1,0];
a = [3,2;1,4];
a = a * a';
sigm = a;
xx_size = length(mu);
tem_matrix = ones(size(X1));
x_mesh= cell(1,xx_size);
for i = 1 : xx_size
x_mesh{i} = tem_matrix * mu(i);
end
x_mesh= {X1,X2};
temp_mesh = [];
for i = 1 : xx_size
temp_mesh = [temp_mesh x_mesh{i}(:)];
end
Z = mvnpdf(temp_mesh,mu,sigm);
z_plat = reshape(Z,size(X1));
figure;contour(X1, X2, z_plat,3, 'LineWidth', 2,'color','m');
hold on;
% Compute the three contours for your data
contourmatrix = contourc(linspace(-10,10,100), linspace(-10,10,100), z_plat, 3);
% Create a "pointer" to keep track of where we are in the output
start = 1;
count = 1;
% Now loop through each contour
while start < size(contourmatrix, 2)
value = contourmatrix(1, start);
nPoints = contourmatrix(2, start);
contour_points = contourmatrix(:, start + (1:nPoints));
% Now fit an ellipse using the file exchange
ellipsedata(count) = fit_ellipse(contour_points(1,:), contour_points(2,:));
% Increment the start pointer
start = start + nPoints + 1;
count = count + 1;
end
orientations = [ellipsedata.phi];
major_length = [ellipsedata.long_axis];
minor_length = [ellipsedata.short_axis];
tet = orientations(1);
x1 = mu(1);
y1 = mu(2);
a = sin(tet) * sqrt(major_length(1));
b = cos(tet) * sqrt(major_length(1));
x2 = x1 + a;
y2 = y1 + b;
line([x1, x2], [y1, y2],'linewidth',2);
tet = ( pi/2 + orientations(1) );
a = sin(tet) * sqrt(minor_length(1));
b = cos(tet) * sqrt(minor_length(1));
x2 = x1 + a;
y2 = y1 + b;
line([x1, x2], [y1, y2],'linewidth',2);