Fit two binary images (panorama?) - matlab

I have several binary images which represent a partial map of an area (~4m radius) and were taken ~0.2m apart, for example:
(Sorry for the different axis limit).
If you look closely, you'll see that the first image is about 20cm to the right.
I want to be able to create a map of the area from several pictures like this.
I've tried several methods, such as Matlab's register but couldn't find any good algorithm for this purpose. Any ideas on how to approach this?
Thanks in advance!

Two possible routes:
Use imregister. This does registration based on image intensity. You will probably want a rigid transform.
However, this will require your data to be an image (matrix), which it doesn't look like it currently is.
Alternatively, you can use control points. These are common (labelled) points in each image which provide a reference to determine the transform.
Matlab has a built in function to determine control points, cpselect. However, again this requires image data. You may be better of writing your own function to do this or just selecting control points manually.
Once you have control points you can determine the transform between them using fitgeotrans

Related

Matlab: Find pattern in an image given a skeletonized template

I am stuck at a current project:
I have an input picture showing the ground with some shapes on it. I have to find a specific shape with a given template.
I have to use distance transformation into skeletonization. My question now is: How can I compare two skeletons? As far as I noticed and have been told, the most methods from the Image Processing Toolbox to match templates don't work, since they are not scale-invariant and rotation invariant.
Also some skeletons are really showing the shapes, others are just one or two short lines, with which I couldn't identify the shapes, if I didn't know what they should be.
I've used edge detection, and region growing on the input so there are only interessting shapes left.
On the template I used distance transformation and skeletonization.
Really looking forward to some tips.
Greetings :)
You could look into convolutions?
Basically move your template over your image and see if there is a match, and where.
The max value of your array [x,y] is the location of your object in the image.
Matlab has a built-in 2D convolution function for this

Compare two nonlinear transformed (monochromatic) images

Given are two monochromatic images of same size. Both are prealigned/anchored to one common point. Some points of the original image did move to a new position in the new image, but not in a linear fashion.
Below you see a picture of an overlay of the original (red) and transformed image (green). What I am looking for now is a measure of "how much did the "individual" points shift".
At first I thought of a simple average correlation of the whole matrix or some kind of phase correlation, but I was wondering whether there is a better way of doing so.
I already found that link, but it didn't help that much. Currently I implement this in Matlab, but this shouldn't be the point I guess.
Update For clarity: I have hundreds of these image pairs and I want to compare each pair how similar they are. It doesn't have to be the most fancy algorithm, rather easy to implement and yielding in a good estimate on similarity.
An unorthodox approach uses RASL to align an image pair. A python implementation is here: https://github.com/welch/rasl and it also
provides a link to the RASL authors' original MATLAB implementation.
You can give RASL a pair of related images, and it will solve for the
transformation (scaling, rotation, translation, you choose) that best
overlays the pixels in the images. A transformation parameter vector
is found for each image, and the difference in parameters tells how "far apart" they are (in terms of transform parameters)
This is not the intended use of
RASL, which is designed to align large collections of related images while being indifferent to changes in alignment and illumination. But I just tried it out on a pair of jittered images and it worked quickly and well.
I may add a shell command that explicitly does this (I'm the author of the python implementation) if I receive encouragement :) (today, you'd need to write a few lines of python to load your images and return the resulting alignment difference).
You can try using Optical Flow. http://www.mathworks.com/discovery/optical-flow.html .
It is usually used to measure the movement of objects from frame T to frame T+1, but you can also use it in your case. You would get a map that tells you the "offset" each point in Image1 moved to Image2.
Then, if you want a metric that gives you a "distance" between the images, you can perhaps average the pixel values or something similar.

How to detect if an image is a texture or a pattern-based image?

I have a question regarding computer vision; seems to be a general question but anyways, just wondering if you might have a clue. I was wondering if there is an efficient way to distinguish texture images (or photos with repetitive patterns) between whatnot, say realistic photos? The patterns could have exact repetitions, or just have major similarity. Actually I'm trying to see given an image if, it is possible to detect it is a texture or a pattern-based image, and that in real-time maybe?
For instance these three are considered textures in our context:
http://www.bigchrisart.com/sites/default/files/video/TR_Texture_RockWall.jpg
http://www.colourbox.com/preview/4440275-144135-seamless-geometric-op-art-texture.jpg
Thank you!
I cannot open your first image. I implemented the Fourier transform on your second one, and you can see frequency responses at specific points:
You can further process the image by extract the local maximum of the magnitude, and they share the same distance to the center (zero frequency). This may be considered as repetitive patterns.
Regarding the case that patterns share major similarity instead of repetitive feature, it is hard to tell whether the frequency magnitude still has such evident response. It depends on how the pattern looks like.
Another possible approach is the auto-correlation on your image.

comparing a known object in different pictures to find position and orientation error?

I am new to this place. I am doing a project where i use X ray images with known object dimensions. During my scan i want to compare the images with respect to first image to measure the position and orientation errors during my manipulator movement.
1) I use a known object next to my measuring object to check the errors.
How can i compare two or different images with same known objects?
2) I am planning to use matlab toolbox for the further processing. Is it possible to do in matlab? If so can somebody help
3) Is it possible to use POSIT algorithm to just find these errors?
You're asking a fairly complex question, without adding a lot of detail. We can only help you properly if you provide a bit more context, perhaps some examples of images.
By the sound of it: you should use the image processing toolbox.
If you have multiple images of test objects with known objects beside it, it is easiest to use normxcorr2 and friends (see this page for a worked-out example).
If you have a large amount of pictures of the same scene, possibly with rotations, scaling, optical distortions, etc. from image to image, and you still want a sub-pixel accurate estimation of your object's position, perhaps image registration is the better way to go.
But again: you should provide more detail. Only then can we give you a better, less generic answer.

I need help compensating for the shifting of images when trying to create a grid with one image and apply it on another

I have two images of yeast plates:
Permissive:
Xgal:
The to images should be in the same spot and roughly the same size. I am trying to use one of the images to generate a grid and then apply that grid to the other image. The grid is made by looking at the colonies on permissive plate, the plate should have 1536 colonies on it. The problem is that the camera that was used to take the images moves a bit up and down and the images can also be shifted slightly due to the other plate not being in exactly the same place.
This then means that when I use the permissive plate to generate the grid on the xgal plate the grid shifts. Does anyone know a way in which I can compensate for this? I am using perl with the gd module. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you
I've done this in other languages in relation to motion analysis. You can mathematically determine the shift in position between two images using cross correlation.
Fortunately, you may not need to actually do the maths :) You could use something like ImageMagick, which provides a lot of image processing functions for you, and is perl scriptable. Independently scripts already exists for tasks very much like yours -- see.
If you have only a few pairs of images and, as in the examples, they are very different in appearance then an alternative method to Tim Barrass' would be
Open the first image in gimp, find the co-ordinates of a landmark feature
Open the second image in gimp, find the co-ordinates of the same landmark
Calculate the offset
Shift the second image using ImageMagick's convert command with the affine option. Set the parameters sx=sy=1.0, rx=ry=0.0, tx= negative horizontal offset, ty= negative vertical offset