How to select the largest contour in MATLAB - matlab

Question

In my progress work, I have to detect a parasite. I have found the parasite using HSV and later made it into a grey image. Now I have done edge detection too. I need some code which tells MATLAB to find the largest contour (parasite) and make the rest of the area as black pixels.

Answer 1

You can select the "largest" contour by filling in the holes that each contour surrounds, figure out which shape gives you the largest area, then use the locations of the largest area and copy that over to a final image. As what Benoit_11 suggested, use regionprops - specifically the Area and PixelList flags. Something like this:
im = imclearborder(im2bw(imread('http://i.stack.imgur.com/a5Yi7.jpg')));
im_fill = imfill(im, 'holes');
s = regionprops(im_fill, 'Area', 'PixelList');
[~,ind] = max([s.Area]);
pix = sub2ind(size(im), s(ind).PixelList(:,2), s(ind).PixelList(:,1));
out = zeros(size(im));
out(pix) = im(pix);
imshow(out);
The first line of code reads in your image from StackOverflow directly. The image is also a RGB image for some reason, and so I convert this into binary through im2bw. There is also a white border that surrounds the image. You most likely had this image open in a figure and saved the image from the figure. I got rid of this by using imclearborder to remove the white border.
Next, we need to fill in the areas that the contour surround, so use imfill with the holes flag. Next, use regionprops to analyze the different filled objects in the image - specifically the Area and which pixels belong to each object in the filled image. Once we obtain these attributes, find the filled contour that gives you the biggest area, then access the correct regionprops element, extract out the pixel locations that belong to the object, then use these and copy over the pixels to an output image and display the results.
We get:
Alternatively, you can use the Perimeter flag (as what Benoit_11) suggested, and simply find the maximum perimeter which will correspond to the largest contour. This should still give you what you want. As such, simply replace the Area flag with Perimeter in the third and fourth lines of code and you should still get the same results.

Answer 2

Since my answer was pretty much all written out I'll give it to you anyway, but the idea is similar to #rayryeng's answer.
Basically I use the Perimeter and PixelIdxList flags during the call to regionprops and therefore get the linear indices of the pixels forming the largest contour, once the image border has been removed using imclearborder.
Here is the code:
clc
clear
BW = imclearborder(im2bw(imread('http://i.stack.imgur.com/a5Yi7.jpg')));
S= regionprops(BW, 'Perimeter','PixelIdxList');
[~,idx] = max([S.Perimeter]);
Indices = S(idx).PixelIdxList;
NewIm = false(size(BW));
NewIm(Indices) = 1;
imshow(NewIm)
And the output:
As you see there are many ways to achieve the same result haha.

Answer 3

This could be one approach -
%// Read in image as binary
im = im2bw(imread('http://i.stack.imgur.com/a5Yi7.jpg'));
im = im(40:320,90:375); %// clear out the whitish border you have
figure, imshow(im), title('Original image')
%// Fill all contours to get us filled blobs and then select the biggest one
outer_blob = imfill(im,'holes');
figure, imshow(outer_blob), title('Filled Blobs')
%// Select the biggest blob that will correspond to the biggest contour
outer_blob = biggest_blob(outer_blob);
%// Get the biggest contour from the biggest filled blob
out = outer_blob & im;
figure, imshow(out), title('Final output: Biggest Contour')
The function biggest_blob that is based on bsxfun is an alternative to what other answers posted here perform with regionprops. From my experience, I have found out this bsxfun based technique to be faster than regionprops. Here are few benchmarks comparing these two techniques for runtime performances on one of my previous answers.
Associated function -
function out = biggest_blob(BW)
%// Find and labels blobs in the binary image BW
[L, num] = bwlabel(BW, 8);
%// Count of pixels in each blob, basically should give area of each blob
counts = sum(bsxfun(#eq,L(:),1:num));
%// Get the label(ind) cooresponding to blob with the maximum area
%// which would be the biggest blob
[~,ind] = max(counts);
%// Get only the logical mask of the biggest blob by comparing all labels
%// to the label(ind) of the biggest blob
out = (L==ind);
return;
Debug images -