Pixel subtraction - matlab

Question

I am working on code that select set of pixels randomly from gray images, then comparing the intensity of each 2 pixels by subtracting the intensity of pixel in one location from another one in different location.
I have code do random selection, but I am not sure of this code and I do not know how to do pixels subtraction?
thank you in advance..
{
N = 100; % number of random pixels
im = imread('image.bmp');
[nRow,nCol,c] = size(im);
randRow = randi(nRow,[N,1]);
randCol = randi(nCol,[N,1]);
subplot(2,1,1)
imagesc(im(randRow,randCol,:))
subplot(2,1,2)
imagesc(im)
}

Answer 1

Parag basically gave you the answer. In order to achieve this vectorized, you need to use sub2ind. However, what I would do is generate two sets of rows and columns. The reason why is because you need one set for the first set of pixels and another set for the next set of pixels so you can subtract the two sets of intensities. Therefore, do something like this:
N = 100; % number of random pixels
im = imread('image.bmp');
[nRow,nCol,c] = size(im);
%// Generate two sets of locations
randRow1 = randi(nRow,[N,1]);
randCol1 = randi(nCol,[N,1]);
randRow2 = randi(nRow,[N,1]);
randCol2 = randi(nCol,[N,1]);
%// Convert each 2D location into a single linear index
%// for vectorization, then subtract
locs1 = sub2ind([nRow, nCol], randRow1, randCol1);
locs2 = sub2ind([nRow, nCol], randRow2, randCol2);
im_subtract = im(locs1) - im(locs2);
subplot(2,1,1)
imagesc(im_subtract);
subplot(2,1,2)
imagesc(im);
However, the above code only assumes that your image is grayscale. If you want to do this for colour, you'll have to do a bit more work. You need to access each channel and subtract on a channel basis. The linear indices that were defined above are just for a single channel. As such, you'll need to offset by nRow*nCol for each channel if you want to access the same corresponding locations in the next channels. As such, I would use sub2ind in combination with bsxfun to properly generate the right values for vectorizing the subtraction. This requires just a slight modification to the above code. Therefore:
N = 100; % number of random pixels
im = imread('image.bmp');
[nRow,nCol,c] = size(im);
%// Generate two sets of locations
randRow1 = randi(nRow,[N,1]);
randCol1 = randi(nCol,[N,1]);
randRow2 = randi(nRow,[N,1]);
randCol2 = randi(nCol,[N,1]);
%// Convert each 2D location into a single linear index
%// for vectorization
locs1 = sub2ind([nRow, nCol], randRow1, randCol1);
locs2 = sub2ind([nRow, nCol], randRow2, randCol2);
%// Extend to as many channels as we have
skip_ind = permute(0:nRow*nCol:(c-1)*nRow*nCol, [1 3 2]);
%// Create 3D linear indices
locs1 = bsxfun(#plus, locs1, skip_ind);
locs2 = bsxfun(#plus, locs2, skip_ind);
%// Now subtract the locations
im_subtract = im(locs1) - im(locs2);
subplot(2,1,1)
imagesc(im_subtract);
subplot(2,1,2)
imagesc(im);