I am trying to find and extract the boundary of a binary image in matlab, without using something like bwboundaries.
Is there a more manual way to do this, using loops maybe and changing the colour of the boundary pixels.
Any help would be appreciated.
Since it is binary so you can use two loop pairs.
-first ensure that image is binary.(just in case it is greyscale threshold it)
-use the first loop pair for height and one for width and trace any change i.e if a pixel is black and the next pixel is white draw that point onto a new mat.(i.e mark that point as 255 or of any colour you desire)
-Do the same for width and height and store it into another mat.
-Then add both the mats and average out the result.
This is the manual way and it may not be efficient.But it helps you modify the process to get you the exact edges.
(Source:I had used this technique for detecting perspective transformed rectangles containing bar code in java since canny edge used to give out too many edges due to bar code lines)
I don't understand what you mean by manual way. Is it mean pixel by pixel or anything else? Anyway try this example and fully explain your question that what you really want.
d1 = double(imread('cameraman.TIF'))./255; %# Load the image, scale from 0 to 1
subplot(2,2,1); imshow(d1); title('d1'); %# Plot the original image
d = edge(d1,'canny',.6); %# Perform Canny edge detection
subplot(2,2,2); imshow(d); title('d'); %# Plot the edges
ds = bwareaopen(d,40); %# Remove small edge objects
subplot(2,2,3); imshow(ds); title('ds'); %# Plot the remaining edges
iout = d1;
BW = ds;
iout(:,:,1) = iout; %# Initialize red color plane
iout(:,:,2) = iout(:,:,1); %# Initialize green color plane
iout(:,:,3) = iout(:,:,1); %# Initialize blue color plane
iout(:,:,2) = min(iout(:,:,2) + BW, 1.0); %# Add edges to green color plane
iout(:,:,3) = min(iout(:,:,3) + BW, 1.0); %# Add edges to blue color plane
subplot(2,2,4); imshow(iout); title('iout'); %# Plot the resulting image
you can also track boundary by using Blob method but it depend on your requirements.
Related
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.
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.
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.
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 -
How do I separate the two connected circles in the image below, using MATLAB? I have tried using imerode, but this does not give good results. Eroding does not work, because in order to erode enough to separate the circles, the lines disappear or become mangled. In other starting pictures, a circle and a line overlap, so isolating the overlapping objects won't work either.
The image shows objects identified by bwboundaries, each object painted a different color. As you can see, the two light blue circles are joined, and I want to disjoin them, producing two separate circles. Thanks
I would recommend you use the Circular Hough Transform through imfindcircles. However, you need version 8 of the Image Processing Toolbox, which was available from version R2012a and onwards. If you don't have this, then unfortunately this won't work :(... but let's go with the assumption that you do have it. However, if you are using something older than R2012a, Dev-iL in his/her comment above linked to some code on MATLAB's File Exchange on an implementation of this, most likely created before the Circular Hough Transform was available: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/9168-detect-circles-with-various-radii-in-grayscale-image-via-hough-transform/
This is a special case of the Hough Transform where you are trying to find circles in your image rather than lines. The beauty with this is that you are able to find circles even when the circle is partially completed or overlapping.
I'm going to take the image that you provided above and do some post-processing on it. I'm going to convert the image to binary, and remove the border, which is white and contains the title. I'm also going to fill in any holes that result so that all of the objects are filled in with solid white. There is also some residual quantization noise after I do this step, so I'm going to a small opening with a 3 x 3 square element. After, I'm going to close the shapes with a 3 x 3 square element, as I see that there are noticeable gaps in the shapes. Therefore:
Therefore, directly reading in your image from where you've posted it:
im = imread('http://s29.postimg.org/spkab8oef/image.jpg'); %// Read in the image
im_gray = im2double(rgb2gray(im)); %// Convert to grayscale, then [0,1]
out = imclearborder(im_gray > 0.6); %// Threshold using 0.6, then clear the border
out = imfill(out, 'holes'); %// Fill in the holes
out = imopen(out, strel('square', 3));
out = imclose(out, strel('square', 3));
This is the image I get:
Now, apply the Circular Hough Transform. The general syntax for this is:
[centres, radii, metric] = imfindcircles(img, [start_radius, end_radius]);
img would be the binary image that contains your shapes, start_radius and end_radius would be the smallest and largest radius of the circles you want to find. The Circular Hough Transform is performed such that it will find any circles that are within this range (in pixels). The outputs are:
centres: Which returns the (x,y) positions of the centres of each circle detected
radii: The radius of each circle
metric: A measure of purity of the circle. Higher values mean that the shape is more probable to be a circle and vice-versa.
I searched for circles having a radius between 30 and 60 pixels. Therefore:
[centres, radii, metric] = imfindcircles(out, [30, 60]);
We can then demonstrate the detected circles, as well as the radii by a combination of plot and viscircles. Therefore:
imshow(out);
hold on;
plot(centres(:,1), centres(:,2), 'r*'); %// Plot centres
viscircles(centres, radii, 'EdgeColor', 'b'); %// Plot circles - Make edge blue
Here's the result:
As you can see, even with the overlapping circles towards the top, the Circular Hough Transform was able to detect two distinct circles in that shape.
Edit - November 16th, 2014
You wish to ensure that the objects are separated before you do bwboundaries. This is a bit tricky to do. The only way I can see you do this is if you don't even use bwboundaries at all and do this yourself. I'm assuming you'll want to analyze each shape's properties by themselves after all of this, so what I suggest you do is iterate through every circle you have, then place each circle on a new blank image, do a regionprops call on that shape, then append it to a separate array. You can also keep track of all of the circles by having a separate array that adds the circles one at a time to this array.
Once you've finished with all of the circles, you'll have a structure array that contains all of the measured properties for all of the measured circles you have found. You would use the array that contains only the circles from above, then use these and remove them from the original image so you get just the lines. You'd then call one more regionprops on this image to get the information for the lines and append this to your final structure array.
Here's the first part of the procedure I outlined above:
num_circles = numel(radii); %// Get number of circles
struct_reg = []; %// Save the shape analysis per circle / line here
%// For creating our circle in the temporary image
[X,Y] = meshgrid(1:size(out,2), 1:size(out,1));
%// Storing all of our circles in this image
circles_img = false(size(out));
for idx = 1 : num_circles %// For each circle we have...
%// Place our circle inside a temporary image
r = radii(idx);
cx = centres(idx,1); cy = centres(idx,2);
tmp = (X - cx).^2 + (Y - cy).^2 <= r^2;
% // Save in master circle image
circles_img(tmp) = true;
%// Do regionprops on this image and save
struct_reg = [struct_reg; regionprops(tmp)];
end
The above code may be a bit hard to swallow, but let's go through it slowly. I first figure out how many circles we have, which is simply looking at how many radii we have detected. I keep a separate array called struct_reg that will append a regionprops struct for each circle and line we have in our image. I use meshgrid to determine the (X,Y) co-ordinates with respect to the image containing our shapes so that I can draw one circle onto a blank image at each iteration. To do this, you simply need to find the Euclidean distance with respect to the centre of each circle, and set the pixels to true only if that location has its distance less than r. After doing this operation, you will have created only one circle and filtered all of them out. You would then use regionprops on this circle, add it to our circles_img array, which will only contain the circles, then continue with the rest of the circles.
At this point, we will have saved all of our circles. This is what circles_img looks like so far:
You'll notice that the circles drawn are clean, but the actual circles in the original image are a bit jagged. If we tried to remove the circles with this clean image, you will get some residual pixels along the border and you won't completely remove the circles themselves. To illustrate what I mean, this is what your image looks like if I tried to remove the circles with circles_img by itself:
... not good, right?
If you want to completely remove the circles, then do a morphological reconstruction through imreconstruct where you can use this image as the seed image, and specify the original image to be what we're working on. The job of morphological reconstruction is essentially a flood fill. You specify seed pixels, and an image you want to work on, and the job of imreconstruct is from these seeds, flood fill with white until we reach the boundaries of the objects that the seed pixels resided in. Therefore:
out_circles = imreconstruct(circles_img, out);
Therefore, we get this for our final reconstructed circles image:
Great! Now, use this and remove the circles from the original image. Once you do this, run regionprops again on this final image and append to your struct_reg variable. Obviously, save a copy of the original image before doing this:
out_copy = out;
out_copy(out_circles) = false;
struct_reg = [struct_reg; regionprops(out_copy)];
Just for sake of argument, this is what the image looks like with the circles removed:
Now, we have analyzed all of our shapes. Bear in mind I did the full regionprops call because I don't know exactly what you want in your analysis... so I just decided to give you everything.
Hope this helps!
erosion is the way to go. You should probably use a larger structuring element.
How about
1 erode
2 detect your objects
3 dilate each object for itself using the same structuring element
How can i calculate the average of a certain area in an image using mat-lab?
For example, if i have an intensity image with an area that is more alight and i want to know what is the average of the intensity there- how do i calculate it?
I think i can find the coordinates of the alight area by using the 'impixelinfo' command.
If there is another more efficient way to find the coordinates i will also be glad to know.
After i know the coordinates how do i calculate the average of part of the image?
You could use one of the imroi type functions in Matlab such as imfreehand
I = imread('cameraman.tif');
h = imshow(I);
e = imfreehand;
% now select area on image - do not close image
% this makes a mask from the area you just drew
BW = createMask(e);
% this takes the mean of pixel values in that area
I_mean = mean(I(BW));
Alternatively, look into using regionprops, especially if there's likely to be more than one of these features in the image. Here, I'm finding points in the image above some threshold intensity and then using imdilate to pick out a small area around each of those points (presuming the points above the threshold are well separated, which may not be the case - if they are too close then imdilate will merge them into one area).
se = strel('disk',5);
BW = imdilate(I>thresh,se);
s = regionprops(BW, I, 'MeanIntensity');
As a preface: this is my first question - I've tried my best to make it as clear as possible, but I apologise if it doesn't meet the required standards.
As part of a summer project, I am taking time-lapse images of an internal melt figure growing inside a crystal of ice. For each of these images I would like to measure the perimeter of, and area enclosed by the figure formed. Linked below is an example of one of my images:
The method that I'm trying to use is the following:
Load image, crop, and convert to grayscale
Process to reduce noise
Find edge/perimeter
Attempt to join edges
Fill perimeter with white
Measure Area and Perimeter using regionprops
This is the code that I am using:
clear; close all;
% load image and convert to grayscale
tyrgb = imread('TyndallTest.jpg');
ty = rgb2gray(tyrgb);
figure; imshow(ty)
% apply a weiner filter to remove noise.
% N is a measure of the window size for detecting coherent features
N=20;
tywf = wiener2(ty,[N,N]);
tywf = tywf(N:end-N,N:end-N);
% rescale the image adaptively to enhance contrast without enhancing noise
tywfb = adapthisteq(tywf);
% apply a canny edge detection
tyedb = edge(tywfb,'canny');
%join edges
diskEnt1 = strel('disk',8); % radius of 4
tyjoin1 = imclose(tyedb,diskEnt1);
figure; imshow(tyjoin1)
It is at this stage that I am struggling. The edges do not quite join, no matter how much I play around with the morphological structuring element. Perhaps there is a better way to complete the edges? Linked is an example of the figure this code outputs:
The reason that I am trying to join the edges is so that I can fill the perimeter with white pixels and then use regionprops to output the area. I have tried using the imfill command, but cannot seem to fill the outline as there are a large number of dark regions to be filled within the perimeter.
Is there a better way to get the area of one of these melt figures that is more appropriate in this case?
As background research: I can make this method work for a simple image consisting of a black circle on a white background using the below code. However I don't know how edit it to handle more complex images with edges that are less well defined.
clear all
close all
clc
%% Read in RGB image from directory
RGB1 = imread('1.jpg') ;
%% Convert RPG image to grayscale image
I1 = rgb2gray(RGB1) ;
%% Transform Image
%CROP
IC1 = imcrop(I1,[74 43 278 285]);
%BINARY IMAGE
BW1 = im2bw(IC1); %Convert to binary image so the boundary can be traced
%FIND PERIMETER
BWP1 = bwperim(BW1);
%Traces perimeters of objects & colours them white (1).
%Sets all other pixels to black (0)
%Doing the same job as an edge detection algorithm?
%FILL PERIMETER WITH WHITE IN ORDER TO MEASURE AREA AND PERIMETER
BWF1 = imfill(BWP1); %This opens figure and allows you to select the areas to fill with white.
%MEASURE PERIMETER
D1 = regionprops(BWF1, 'area', 'perimeter');
%Returns an array containing the properties area and perimeter.
%D1(1) returns the perimeter of the box and an area value identical to that
%perimeter? The box must be bounded by a perimeter.
%D1(2) returns the perimeter and area of the section filled in BWF1
%% Display Area and Perimeter data
D1(2)
I think you might have room to improve the effect of edge detection in addition to the morphological transformations, for instance the following resulted in what appeared to me a relatively satisfactory perimeter.
tyedb = edge(tywfb,'sobel',0.012);
%join edges
diskEnt1 = strel('disk',7); % radius of 4
tyjoin1 = imclose(tyedb,diskEnt1);
In addition I used bwfill interactively to fill in most of the interior. It should be possible to fill the interior programatically but I did not pursue this.
% interactively fill internal regions
[ny nx] = size(tyjoin1);
figure; imshow(tyjoin1)
tyjoin2=tyjoin1;
titl = sprintf('click on a region to fill\nclick outside window to stop...')
while 1
pts=ginput(1)
tyjoin2 = bwfill(tyjoin2,pts(1,1),pts(1,2),8);
imshow(tyjoin2)
title(titl)
if (pts(1,1)<1 | pts(1,1)>nx | pts(1,2)<1 | pts(1,2)>ny), break, end
end
This was the result I obtained
The "fractal" properties of the perimeter may be of importance to you however. Perhaps you want to retain the folds in your shape.
You might want to consider Active Contours. This will give you a continous boundary of the object rather than patchy edges.
Below are links to
A book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Active-Contours-Application-Techniques-Statistics/dp/1447115570/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377248739&sr=8-1-fkmr2&keywords=Active+shape+models+Andrew+Blake%2C+Michael+Isard
A demo:
http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/msn/book/new_demo/Snakes/
and some Matlab code on the File Exchange:
http://www.mathworks.co.uk/matlabcentral/fileexchange/28149-snake-active-contour
and a link to a description on how to implement it: http://www.cb.uu.se/~cris/blog/index.php/archives/217
Using the implementation on the File Exchange, you can get something like this:
%% Load the image
% You could use the segmented image obtained previously
% and then apply the snake on that (although I use the original image).
% This will probably make the snake work better and the edges
% in your image is not that well defined.
% Make sure the original and the segmented image
% have the same size. They don't at the moment
I = imread('33kew0g.jpg');
% Convert the image to double data type
I = im2double(I);
% Show the image and select some points with the mouse (at least 4)
% figure, imshow(I); [y,x] = getpts;
% I have pre-selected the coordinates already
x = [ 525.8445 473.3837 413.4284 318.9989 212.5783 140.6320 62.6902 32.7125 55.1957 98.6633 164.6141 217.0749 317.5000 428.4172 494.3680 527.3434 561.8177 545.3300];
y = [ 435.9251 510.8691 570.8244 561.8311 570.8244 554.3367 476.3949 390.9586 311.5179 190.1085 113.6655 91.1823 98.6767 106.1711 142.1443 218.5872 296.5291 375.9698];
% Make an array with the selected coordinates
P=[x(:) y(:)];
%% Start Snake Process
% You probably have to fiddle with the parameters
% a bit more that I have
Options=struct;
Options.Verbose=true;
Options.Iterations=1000;
Options.Delta = 0.02;
Options.Alpha = 0.5;
Options.Beta = 0.2;
figure(1);
[O,J]=Snake2D(I,P,Options);
If the end result is an area/diameter estimate, then why not try to find maximal and minimal shapes that fit in the outline and then use the shapes' area to estimate the total area. For instance, compute a minimal circle around the edge set then a maximal circle inside the edges. Then you could use these to estimate diameter and area of the actual shape.
The advantage is that your bounding shapes can be fit in a way that minimizes error (unbounded edges) while optimizing size either up or down for the inner and outer shape, respectively.
I have an image like this:
I would like to remove the background(part A) near the edge of the object. I plan to use color detection since the color of object and noise are a little bit different. But maybe it is not a good idea.
I would appreciate if you could have any idea for me.
Thanks
If you're performing any sort of color-based segmentation of images, you may find it easier to convert to HSV color space first to select specific color ranges. I outline how you can do this sort of thing in an answer I gave to a similar question. The steps you would likely want to follow would be the following:
Convert to HSV and create a binary mask by selecting pixels with hues within a green color range and with a minimum amount of saturation and value.
Erode the resulting mask by a certain amount to remove small spurious clusters.
Dilate the eroded mask to get back to a smoother edge for your selected pixels.
I can't give an exact example of how you would apply this analysis to your data since the image you provide in the question actually has a higher resolution than the data it displays, but here's a general solution that uses the functions RGB2HSV, IMERODE, and IMDILATE (the last two are from the Image Processing Toolbox):
rgbImage = imread('data.jpg'); %# Load the RGB image
hsvImage = rgb2hsv(rgbImage); %# Convert to HSV color space
hPlane = 360.*hsvImage(:,:,1); %# Get the hue plane, scaled from 0 to 360
vPlane = hsvImage(:,:,3); %# Get the value plane
mask = (hPlane >= 80) & (hPlane <= 140) & (vPlane >= 0.3); %# Select a mask
SE = strel('disk',10); %# Create a disk-shaped element
mask = imdilate(imerode(mask,SE),SE); %# Erode and dilate the mask
And here's some code to visualize the edges created by the above analysis:
edgeMask = mask-imerode(mask,strel('disk',1)); %# Create an edge mask
edgeImage = zeros([size(edges) 3]); %# Create an RGB image for the edge
edgeImage(find(edgeMask)) = 1; %# that's colored red
image(rgbImage); %# Plot the original image
hold on;
image(edgeImage,'AlphaData',edgeMask); %# Plot the edge image over it