find peak values in matlab - matlab

Question

suppose that we are determine peaks in vector as follow:
we have real values one dimensional vector with length m,or
x(1),x(2),.....x(m)
if x(1)>x(2) then clearly for first point peak(1)=x(1);else we are then comparing x(3) to x(2),if x(3)
[ indexes,peaks]=function(x,m);
c=[];
b=[];
if x(1)>x(2)
peaks(1)=x(1);
else
for i=2:m-1
if x(i+1)< x(i) & x(i)>x(i-1)
peak(i)=x(i);
end;
end
end
end
peaks are determined also using following picture:
sorry for the second picture,maybe it is not triangle,just A and C are on straight line,but here peak is B,so i can't continue my code for writing algorithm to find peak values in my vector.please help me to continue it
updated.numercial example given
x=[2 1 3 5 4 7 6 8 9]
here because first point is more then second,so it means that peak(1)=2,then we are comparing 1 to 3,because 3 is more then 1,we now want to compare 5 to 3,it is also more,compare 5 to 4,because 5 is more then 4,then it means that peak(2)=5,,so if we continue next peak is 7,and final peak would be 9
in case of first element is less then second,then we are comparing second element to third one,if second is more then third and first elements at the same time,then peak is second,and so on

Answer 1

You could try something like this:
function [peaks,peak_indices] = find_peaks(row_vector)
A = [min(row_vector)-1 row_vector min(row_vector)-1];
j = 1;
for i=1:length(A)-2
temp=A(i:i+2);
if(max(temp)==temp(2))
peaks(j) = row_vector(i);
peak_indices(j) = i;
j = j+1;
end
end
end
Save it as find_peaks.m
Now, you can use it as:
>> A = [2 1 3 5 4 7 6 8 9];
>> [peaks, peak_indices] = find_peaks(A)
peaks =
2 5 7 9
peak_indices =
1 4 6 9
This would however give you "plateaus" as well (adjacent and equal "peaks").

Answer 2

You can use diff to do the comparison and add two points in the beginning and end to cover the border cases:
B=[1 diff(A) -1];
peak_indices = find(B(1:end-1)>=0 & B(2:end)<=0);
peaks = A(peak_indices);
It returns
peak_indices =
1 4 6 9
peaks =
2 5 7 9
for your example.

Answer 3

findpeaks does it if you have a recent matlab version, but it's also a bit slow.
This proposed solution would be quite slow due to the for loop, and you also have a risk of rounding error due to the fact that you compare the maximal value to the central one instead of comparing the position of the maximum, which is better for your purpose.
You can stack the data so as to have three columns : the first one for the preceeding value, the second is the data and the third one is the next value, do a max, and your local maxima are the points for which the position of the max along columns is 2.
I've coded this as a subroutine of my own peak detection function, that adds a further level of iterative peak detection
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/42927-find-peaks-using-scale-space-approach