Python 2.7: Area opening and closing binary image in Python not so accurate - python-2.7

I am using Python 2.7 and I used following Python and Matlab function for removing noises and fill holes in this image
.
1. Code to remove noise and fill holes using Python and Opencv
img = cv2.imread("binar.png",0)
kernel = np.ones((5,5),np.uint8)
open = cv2.morphologyEx(img, cv2.MORPH_OPEN, kernel)
close = cv2.morphologyEx(open, cv2.MORPH_CLOSE, kernel)
Code used in python and scipy using ndimage.binary_closing:
im = cv2.imread("binar.png", cv2.IMREAD_GRAYSCALE)
open_img = ndimage.binary_opening(im)
close_img = ndimage.binary_closing(open_img)
clg = close_img.astype(np.int)
Code used in Matlab: I used imfill and bwareaopen.
The results I got is shown below:
First image from using nd.image.binary_closing. My problem is it doesn't fill all white blobs fully. We can see inbetween minor black portion are still present.
Second image from using cv2.morphologyEx. Same problem in this also, as it also has some minor white portion in between white blobs. Here I faced one more problem. It converts some white pixels into black which should not be otherwise. I mentioned those areas with red color in image 2. Red highlighted portions is connected with larger one blobs but even then they get converted into black pixels.
Third image I got from MATLAB processing in which imfill work perfectly without converting essential white pixels into black.
So, my question is, Is there any method for Python 2.7 with which I can remove noises below certain area and fill the white blobs accurately as in Matlab? One more thing is, I want to find out the centroids and areas of those final processed blobs in last for further used. I can find out these using cv2.connectedComponentsWithStats but I want to find area and centroids after removing noises and filling blobs.
Thanks.
(I think this is not duplicate because I want to do it in Python not in Matlab. )

From Matlab's imfill() documentation:
BW2= imfill(BW,locations) performs a flood-fill operation on background pixels of the input binary image BW, starting from the points specified in locations. (...)
BW2= imfill(BW,'holes') fills holes in the input binary image BW. In this syntax, a hole is a set of background pixels that cannot be reached by filling in the background from the edge of the image.
I2= imfill(I) fills holes in the grayscale image I. In this syntax, a hole is defined as an area of dark pixels surrounded by lighter pixels.
The duplicate that I flagged shows ways to accomplish the third variant usually. However for many images, the second variant will still work fine and is extremely easy to accomplish. From the first variant you see that it mentions a flood-fill operation, which can be implemented in OpenCV with cv2.floodFill(). The second variant gives a really easy method---just flood fill from the edges, and the pixels left over are the black holes which can't be reached from outside. Then if you invert this image, you'll get white pixels for the holes, which you can add to your mask to fill in the holes.
import cv2
import numpy as np
# read image, ensure binary
img = cv2.imread('image.png', 0)
img[img!=0] = 255
# flood fill background to find inner holes
holes = img.copy()
cv2.floodFill(holes, None, (0, 0), 255)
# invert holes mask, bitwise or with img fill in holes
holes = cv2.bitwise_not(holes)
filled_holes = cv2.bitwise_or(img, holes)
cv2.imshow('', filled_holes)
cv2.waitKey()
Note that in this case, I just set the starting pixel for the background at (0,0). However it's possible that there could be, e.g., a white line going down the center which would cut off this operation to stop filling (i.e. stop finding the background) for the other half of the image. The more robust method would be to go through all of the edge pixels on the image, and flood fill every time you come across a black pixel. You can accomplish this more easily with the mask parameter in cv2.floodFill(), which allows you to continue to update the mask each time.
To find the centroids of each blob, you could use contour detection and cv2.moments() to find the centroids of each contour, or you could also do cv2.connectedComponentsWithStats() like you mentioned.

Related

cv::detail::MultiBandBlender strange white streaks at the end of the photo

I'm working with OpenCV 3.4.8 with C++11 and I'm trying to blend images together.
In this example I have 2 images (thiers mask shown in the screen belowe). I have georeference, so I can easy calculate corners of this images in the final image.
The data outside the masks are black.
My code looks like something like that:
std::vector<cv::UMat> inputImages;
std::vector<cv::UMat> masks;
std::vector<cv::Point> corners;
std::vector<cv::Size> imgSizes;
/*
here is code where I load images, create thier masks
(like in the screen above) and calculate corners.
*/
cv::Ptr<cv::detail::SeamFinder> seamFinder = new cv::detail::DpSeamFinder();
seamFinder->find(inputImages, corners, masks);
cv::Ptr<cv::detail::Blender> blender = new cv::detail:: MultiBandBlender(false);
blender->prepare(corners, imgSizes);
for(size_t i = 0; i < inputImages.size(); i++)
{
blender->feed(inputImages[i], masks[i], corners[i]);
}
cv::UMat blendedImg, outMask;
blender->blend(blendedImg, outMask);
SeamFinder gives me result like in the screen above. Finded seam lines looks good and Im very satisied form them. But the other problem occurs in the next step. The MultiBandBlender is making strange white streaks when the seam line goes on the end of the data.
This is an example:
When I don't use blender, but just use masks to cut the oryginal images and just add (cv::add()) images together with additional alpha channel (made from masks) I get very good results without any holes and strange colors, but I need to have more smoothed transition :/
Can anyone help me? When I create MultiBand Blender with smaller num_bands the white streaks are smaller, and with the num_bands = 0 the results looks like with just adding images.
I looked at feed() and blend() methods in the MultiBandBlender and I think that it is connected with Gaussian or Laplacian pyramid and the final restoring images from Laplacian pyramid in the blend() method.
EDIT1:
When Gaussian and Laplacian pyramids are created the copyMakeBorder(), which prevents the MultiBandBlender from making this white streaks when images are fully filled with the data. So in my case I think that I need to create my blender almost the same like MultiBandBlender, but copyMakeBorder() method in the feed() method change to the something that will "extend" my image inside the mask, like #AlexanderKondratskiy suggested.
Now I don't know how to achive correct "extend" similar to BORDER_REFLECT or BORDER_REFLECT_101.
I suspect your input images contain white pixels outside those masks. The white banding occurs around the areas where the seam follows the mask exactly. For Laplacian for example, pixels outside the mask do influence the final result, as each layer of a pyramid is essentially some blurring kernel on the image.
If you have some kind of good data outside the mask, keep it. If you do not, I suggest "extending" your image beyond the mask to maintain a smooth transition.
Edit:
Here's two things you could try, unless someone with more experience with OpenCV comes along.
To prove/disprove my hypothesis, fill the black region with just the average or median color within the mask. This should make the transition to the outside region less sharp, and hopefully reduce the artefacts. If that does not happen, my answer is wrong.
In terms of what is probably a good generalization of "BORDER_REFLECT" when the edge is arbitrary, you could try something like this:
Find the centroid c of the mask polygon
For each pixel p outside the mask, think of the line between it and c
Calculate point p' along this line that is the same distance inside the mask area, as p is from the mask edge. (i.e. you're reflecting along the mask edge)
Linearly interpolate the color of from the neighbors of p' (as it's position may not fall exactly in the middle of a pixel). That's the color of pixel p

Rectangle detection / tracking using OpenCV

What I need
I'm currently working on an augmented reality kinda game. The controller that the game uses (I'm talking about the physical input device here) is a mono colored, rectangluar pice of paper. I have to detect the position, rotation and size of that rectangle in the capture stream of the camera. The detection should be invariant on scale and invariant on rotation along the X and Y axes.
The scale invariance is needed in case that the user moves the paper away or towards the camera. I don't need to know the distance of the rectangle so scale invariance translates to size invariance.
The rotation invariance is needed in case the user tilts the rectangle along its local X and / or Y axis. Such a rotation changes the shape of the paper from rectangle to trapezoid. In this case, the object oriented bounding box can be used to measure the size of the paper.
What I've done
At the beginning there is a calibration step. A window shows the camera feed and the user has to click on the rectangle. On click, the color of the pixel the mouse is pointing at is taken as reference color. The frames are converted into HSV color space to improve color distinguishing. I have 6 sliders that adjust the upper and lower thresholds for each channel. These thresholds are used to binarize the image (using opencv's inRange function).
After that I'm eroding and dilating the binary image to remove noise and unite nerby chunks (using opencv's erode and dilate functions).
The next step is finding contours (using opencv's findContours function) in the binary image. These contours are used to detect the smallest oriented rectangles (using opencv's minAreaRect function). As final result I'm using the rectangle with the largest area.
A short conclusion of the procedure:
Grab a frame
Convert that frame to HSV
Binarize it (using the color that the user selected and the thresholds from the sliders)
Apply morph ops (erode and dilate)
Find contours
Get the smallest oriented bouding box of each contour
Take the largest of those bounding boxes as result
As you may noticed, I don't make an advantage of the knowledge about the actual shape of the paper, simply because I don't know how to use this information properly.
I've also thought about using the tracking algorithms of opencv. But there were three reasons that prevented me from using them:
Scale invariance: as far as I read about some of the algorithms, some don't support different scales of the object.
Movement prediction: some algorithms use movement prediction for better performance, but the object I'm tracking moves completely random and therefore unpredictable.
Simplicity: I'm just looking for a mono colored rectangle in an image, nothing fancy like car or person tracking.
Here is a - relatively - good catch (binary image after erode and dilate)
and here is a bad one
The Question
How can I improve the detection in general and especially to be more resistant against lighting changes?
Update
Here are some raw images for testing.
Can't you just use thicker material?
Yes I can and I already do (unfortunately I can't access these pieces at the moment). However, the problem still remains. Even if I use material like cartboard. It isn't bent as easy as paper, but one can still bend it.
How do you get the size, rotation and position of the rectangle?
The minAreaRect function of opencv returns a RotatedRect object. This object contains all the data I need.
Note
Because the rectangle is mono colored, there is no possibility to distinguish between top and bottom or left and right. This means that the rotation is always in range [0, 180] which is perfectly fine for my purposes. The ratio of the two sides of the rect is always w:h > 2:1. If the rectangle would be a square, the range of roation would change to [0, 90], but this can be considered irrelevant here.
As suggested in the comments I will try histogram equalization to reduce brightness issues and take a look at ORB, SURF and SIFT.
I will update on progress.
The H channel in the HSV space is the Hue, and it is not sensitive to the light changing. Red range in about [150,180].
Based on the mentioned information, I do the following works.
Change into the HSV space, split the H channel, threshold and normalize it.
Apply morph ops (open)
Find contours, filter by some properties( width, height, area, ratio and so on).
PS. I cannot fetch the image you upload on the dropbox because of the NETWORK. So, I just use crop the right side of your second image as the input.
imgname = "src.png"
img = cv2.imread(imgname)
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
## Split the H channel in HSV, and get the red range
hsv = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2HSV)
h,s,v = cv2.split(hsv)
h[h<150]=0
h[h>180]=0
## normalize, do the open-morp-op
normed = cv2.normalize(h, None, 0, 255, cv2.NORM_MINMAX, cv2.CV_8UC1)
kernel = cv2.getStructuringElement(shape=cv2.MORPH_ELLIPSE, ksize=(3,3))
opened = cv2.morphologyEx(normed, cv2.MORPH_OPEN, kernel)
res = np.hstack((h, normed, opened))
cv2.imwrite("tmp1.png", res)
Now, we get the result as this (h, normed, opened):
Then find contours and filter them.
contours = cv2.findContours(opened, cv2.RETR_LIST, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
print(len(contours))[-2]
bboxes = []
rboxes = []
cnts = []
dst = img.copy()
for cnt in contours:
## Get the stright bounding rect
bbox = cv2.boundingRect(cnt)
x,y,w,h = bbox
if w<30 or h < 30 or w*h < 2000 or w > 500:
continue
## Draw rect
cv2.rectangle(dst, (x,y), (x+w,y+h), (255,0,0), 1, 16)
## Get the rotated rect
rbox = cv2.minAreaRect(cnt)
(cx,cy), (w,h), rot_angle = rbox
print("rot_angle:", rot_angle)
## backup
bboxes.append(bbox)
rboxes.append(rbox)
cnts.append(cnt)
The result is like this:
rot_angle: -2.4540319442749023
rot_angle: -1.8476102352142334
Because the blue rectangle tag in the source image, the card is splited into two sides. But a clean image will have no problem.
I know it's been a while since I asked the question. I recently continued on the topic and solved my problem (although not through rectangle detection).
Changes
Using wood to strengthen my controllers (the "rectangles") like below.
Placed 2 ArUco markers on each controller.
How it works
Convert the frame to grayscale,
downsample it (to increase performance during detection),
equalize the histogram using cv::equalizeHist,
find markers using cv::aruco::detectMarkers,
correlate markers (if multiple controllers),
analyze markers (position and rotation),
compute result and apply some error correction.
It turned out that the marker detection is very robust to lighting changes and different viewing angles which allows me to skip any calibration steps.
I placed 2 markers on each controller to increase the detection robustness even more. Both markers has to be detected only one time (to measure how they correlate). After that, it's sufficient to find only one marker per controller as the other can be extrapolated from the previously computed correlation.
Here is a detection result in a bright environment:
in a darker environment:
and when hiding one of the markers (the blue point indicates the extrapolated marker postition):
Failures
The initial shape detection that I implemented didn't perform well. It was very fragile to lighting changes. Furthermore, it required an initial calibration step.
After the shape detection approach I tried SIFT and ORB in combination with brute force and knn matcher to extract and locate features in the frames. It turned out that mono colored objects don't provide much keypoints (what a surprise). The performance of SIFT was terrible anyway (ca. 10 fps # 540p).
I drew some lines and other shapes on the controller which resulted in more keypoints beeing available. However, this didn't yield in huge improvements.

OpenCV - Removal of noise in image

I have an image here with a table.. In the column on the right the background is filled with noise
How to detect the areas with noise? I only want to apply some kind of filter on the parts with noise because I need to do OCR on it and any kind of filter will reduce the overall recognition
And what kind of filter is the best to remove the background noise in the image?
As said I need to do OCR on the image
I tried some filters/operations in OpenCV and it seems to work pretty well.
Step 1: Dilate the image -
kernel = np.ones((5, 5), np.uint8)
cv2.dilate(img, kernel, iterations = 1)
As you see, the noise is gone but the characters are very light, so I eroded the image.
Step 2: Erode the image -
kernel = np.ones((5, 5), np.uint8)
cv2.erode(img, kernel, iterations = 1)
As you can see, the noise is gone however some characters on the other columns are broken. I would recommend running these operations on the noisy column only. You might want to use HoughLines to find the last column. Then you can extract that column only, run dilation + erosion and replace this with the corresponding column in the original image.
Additionally, dilation + erosion is actually an operation called closing. This you could call directly using -
cv2.morphologyEx(img, cv2.MORPH_CLOSE, kernel)
As #Ermlg suggested, medianBlur with a kernel of 3 also works wonderfully.
cv2.medianBlur(img, 3)
Alternative Step
As you can see all these filters work but it is better if you implement these filters only in the part where the noise is. To do that, use the following:
edges = cv2.Canny(img, 50, 150, apertureSize = 3) // img is gray here
lines = cv2.HoughLinesP(edges, 1, np.pi / 180, 100, 1000, 50) // last two arguments are minimum line length and max gap between two lines respectively.
for line in lines:
for x1, y1, x2, y2 in line:
print x1, y1
// This gives the start coordinates for all the lines. You should take the x value which is between (0.75 * w, w) where w is the width of the entire image. This will give you essentially **(x1, y1) = (1896, 766)**
Then, you can extract this part only like :
extract = img[y1:h, x1:w] // w, h are width and height of the image
Then, implement the filter (median or closing) in this image. After removing the noise, you need to put this filtered image in place of the blurred part in the original image.
image[y1:h, x1:w] = median
This is straightforward in C++ :
extract.copyTo(img, new Rect(x1, y1, w - x1, h - y1))
Final Result with alternate method
Hope it helps!
My solution is based on thresholding to get the resulted image in 4 steps.
Read image by OpenCV 3.2.0.
Apply GaussianBlur() to smooth image especially the region in gray color.
Mask the image to change text to white and the rest to black.
Invert the masked image to black text in white.
The code is in Python 2.7. It can be changed to C++ easily.
import numpy as np
import cv2
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
%matplotlib inline
# read Danish doc image
img = cv2.imread('./imagesStackoverflow/danish_invoice.png')
# apply GaussianBlur to smooth image
blur = cv2.GaussianBlur(img,(5,3), 1)
# threshhold gray region to white (255,255, 255) and sets the rest to black(0,0,0)
mask=cv2.inRange(blur,(0,0,0),(150,150,150))
# invert the image to have text black-in-white
res = 255 - mask
plt.figure(1)
plt.subplot(121), plt.imshow(img[:,:,::-1]), plt.title('original')
plt.subplot(122), plt.imshow(blur, cmap='gray'), plt.title('blurred')
plt.figure(2)
plt.subplot(121), plt.imshow(mask, cmap='gray'), plt.title('masked')
plt.subplot(122), plt.imshow(res, cmap='gray'), plt.title('result')
plt.show()
The following is the plotted images by the code for reference.
Here is the result image at 2197 x 3218 pixels.
As I know the median filter is the best solution to reduce noise. I would recommend to use median filter with 3x3 window. See function cv::medianBlur().
But be careful when use any noise filtration simultaneously with OCR. Its can lead to decreasing of recognition accuracy.
Also I would recommend to try using pair of functions (cv::erode() and cv::dilate()). But I'm not shure that it will best solution then cv::medianBlur() with window 3x3.
I would go with median blur (probably 5*5 kernel).
if you are planning to apply OCR the image. I would advise you to the following:
Filter the image using Median Filter.
Find contours in the filtered image, you will get only text contours (Call them F).
Find contours in the original image (Call them O).
isolate all contours in O that have intersection with any contour in F.
Faster solution:
Find contours in the original image.
Filter them based on size.
Blur (3x3 box)
Threshold at 127
Result:
If you are very worried of removing pixels that could hurt your OCR detection. Without adding artefacts ea be as pure to the original as possible. Then you should create a blob filter. And delete any blobs that are smaller then n pixels or so.
Not going to write code, but i know this works great as i use this myself, though i dont use openCV (i wrote my own multithreaded blobfilter out of speed reasons). And sorry but i cannot share my code here. Just describing how to do it.
If processing time is not an issue, a very effective method in this case would be to compute all black connected components, and remove those smaller than a few pixels. It would remove all the noisy dots (apart those touching a valid component), but preserve all characters and the document structure (lines and so on).
The function to use would be connectedComponentWithStats (before you probably need to produce the negative image, the threshold function with THRESH_BINARY_INV would work in this case), drawing white rectangles where small connected components where found.
In fact, this method could be used to find characters, defined as connected components of a given minimum and maximum size, and with aspect ratio in a given range.
I had already faced the same issue and got the best solution.
Convert source image to grayscale image and apply fastNlMeanDenoising function and then apply threshold.
Like this -
fastNlMeansDenoising(gray,dst,3.0,21,7);
threshold(dst,finaldst,150,255,THRESH_BINARY);
ALSO use can adjust threshold accorsing to your background noise image.
eg- threshold(dst,finaldst,200,255,THRESH_BINARY);
NOTE - If your column lines got removed...You can take a mask of column lines from source image and can apply to the denoised resulted image using BITWISE operations like AND,OR,XOR.
Try thresholding the image like this. Make sure your src is in grayscale. This method will only retain the pixels which are between 150 and 255 intensity.
threshold(src, output, 150, 255, CV_THRESH_BINARY | CV_THRESH_OTSU);
You might want to invert the image as you are trying to negate the gray pixels. After the operation, invert it again to get your desired result.

Create mask to select the black area

I have a black area around my image and I want to create a mask using OpenCV C++ that selects just this black area so that I can paint it later. How can i do that without affecting the image itself?
I tried to convert the image to grayscale and then using threshold to convert it to binary, but it affects my image since the result contains black pixels from inside the image.
Another Question : if i want to crop the image instead of paint it, how can i do it??
Thanks in advance,
I would solve the problem like this:
Inverse-binarize the image with a threshold of 1 (i.e. all pixels with the value 0 are set to 1, all others to 0)
use cv::findContours to find white segments
remove segments that don't touch image borders
use cv::drawContours to draw the remaining segments to a mask.
There is probably a more efficient solution in terms of runtime efficiency, but you should be able to prototype my solution quite quickly.

Scanning and Detecting Object Color in Image

I'm developing a software that detects boxers punching motion. At the moment i used color based segmentation using inRange function and set it to detect blue Minimum value and Blue Maximum value. The problem is that the range is quite wide and my cam at times picks out noise and segments objects of no interest. To improve the software i though of scanning image of a boxing glove and establishing exact Blue color Value before further processing.
It would make sens to me to store that value in a Vector and call it in inRange fiction
// My current function which takes the Minimum and Maximum values of Blue Color
Mat range_out;
inRange(blur_out, Scalar(100, 100, 100), Scalar(120, 255, 255), range_out);
So i would image the vector to go somewhere here.
Scan this above image compute the Blue value
Store this value in an array
recall the array in a inRange function
Could someone suggest a solution to this problem or direct me to a source of information where I can look for answers ?
since you are detecting the boxer gloves in motion so first use motion to separate it from other elements in the scene...use frame differentiation or optical flow to separate the glove and other moving areas from non moving areas...now in those moving area try for some colour detection...
Separe luminosity and cromaticity - your fixed range will not work very well in different light conditions. Your range is wide probably because you are trying to see "blue" in dark and on light at the same time. Convert your image to HSV (or La*b*) and discard V (or L), keeping H and S (or a* and b*).
Learn a color distribution instead a simple range - take some samples and compute a 2D
color histogram on H and S (a* or b*) for pixels on the glove. This histogram will be a model for the color distribution of your object. Then, use c2.calcBackProjection to detect the pixels of interest in your scene.
Clean the result using morphological close operation
Important: on step 2, play a little with different quantization values (ie, different numbers of bins).