Detect rectangles drawn on an background image using OpenCV - c++

Question

I’m trying to detect some rectangles (white colored) which is drawn on an image. (say using paint or some other image editing tool).
As I’m very much beginner to image processing I searched through net and OpenCV sample program to accomplish the job, but could not get it to working perfectly. I’m using OpenCV C++ library.
Algorithm that I’ve tried
cv::Mat src = cv::imread(argv[1]);
cv::Mat gray;
cv::cvtColor(src, gray, CV_BGR2GRAY);
meanStdDev(gray, mu, sigma);
cv::Mat bw;
cv::Canny(gray, bw, mu.val[0] - sigma.val[0], mu.val[0] + sigma.val[0]);
std::vector<std::vector<cv::Point> > contours;
cv::findContours(bw.clone(), contours, CV_RETR_EXTERNAL, CV_CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE);
std::vector<cv::Point> approx;
for (int i = 0; i < contours.size(); i++){
cv::approxPolyDP(cv::Mat(contours[i]), approx, cv::arcLength(cv::Mat(contours[i]), true)*0.02, true);
if (approx.size() >= 4 && approx.size() <= 6)
Rect boundRect = boundingRect( Mat(approx) );
rectangle( dst, boundRect.tl(), boundRect.br(), Scalar(255,255,255), 1, 8, 0 );}
Only one rectangle is detected. Can you please guide me or some link for the same.
Input image:
Output image:

Answer 1

I could not compile your code sample because there boundRect is declared within the if-block but rectangle drawing (trying to access boundRect) is outside of the if-block, so I adjusted your code:
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
cv::Mat src = cv::imread("C:/StackOverflow/Input/rectangles.png");
cv::Mat dst = src.clone();
cv::Mat gray;
cv::cvtColor(src, gray, CV_BGR2GRAY);
// ADDED: missing declaration of mu and sigma
cv::Scalar mu, sigma;
meanStdDev(gray, mu, sigma);
cv::Mat bw;
cv::Canny(gray, bw, mu.val[0] - sigma.val[0], mu.val[0] + sigma.val[0]);
// ADDED: displaying the canny output
cv::imshow("canny", bw);
std::vector<std::vector<cv::Point> > contours;
cv::findContours(bw.clone(), contours, CV_RETR_EXTERNAL, CV_CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE);
std::vector<cv::Point> approx;
for (int i = 0; i < contours.size(); i++){
cv::approxPolyDP(cv::Mat(contours[i]), approx, cv::arcLength(cv::Mat(contours[i]), true)*0.02, true);
if (approx.size() >= 4 && approx.size() <= 6)
{
// ADDED: brackets around both lines belonging to the if-block
cv::Rect boundRect = cv::boundingRect(cv::Mat(approx));
cv::rectangle(dst, boundRect.tl(), boundRect.br(), cv::Scalar(255, 255, 255), 3, 8, 0);
}
}
// ADDED: displaying input and results
cv::imshow("input", src);
cv::imshow("dst", dst);
cv::imwrite("C:/StackOverflow/Output/rectangles.png", dst);
cv::waitKey(0);
return 0;
}
with your input image I do get this output:
which is probably not what you expected. See the canny output image (it is always good to have a look at intermediate results for visual debugging!), there are just too many structures in the image and contours will cover all of these, so there are some that will be approximated to polynomes with 4 to 6 elements.
Instead you'll have to become a bit smarter. You could try to extract straight lines with cv::HoughLinesP and connect those lines. Or you could try to segment the image first by finding white areas (if your rectangles are always white).
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
cv::Mat src = cv::imread("C:/StackOverflow/Input/rectangles.png");
cv::Mat dst = src.clone();
cv::Mat gray;
cv::cvtColor(src, gray, CV_BGR2GRAY);
cv::Mat mask;
// find "white" pixel
cv::inRange(src, cv::Scalar(230, 230, 230), cv::Scalar(255, 255, 255), mask);
cv::imshow("mask", mask);
std::vector<std::vector<cv::Point> > contours;
cv::findContours(mask, contours, CV_RETR_EXTERNAL, CV_CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE);
std::vector<cv::Point> approx;
for (int i = 0; i < contours.size(); i++){
cv::approxPolyDP(cv::Mat(contours[i]), approx, cv::arcLength(cv::Mat(contours[i]), true)*0.02, true);
if (approx.size() >= 4 && approx.size() <= 6)
{
cv::Rect boundRect = cv::boundingRect(cv::Mat(approx));
cv::rectangle(dst, boundRect.tl(), boundRect.br(), cv::Scalar(255, 255, 255), 1, 8, 0);
}
}
cv::imshow("input", src);
cv::imshow("dst", dst);
cv::imwrite("C:/StackOverflow/Output/rectangles2.png", dst);
cv::waitKey(0);
return 0;
}
gives this result:
As you can see, there are other bright regions near white, too. The polynom approximation does not help much, too.

Answer 2

In general, it's easier to segment a color (even white) in HSV space. With appropriate thresholds:
inRange(hsv, Scalar(0, 0, 220), Scalar(180, 30, 255), mask);
where we don't care about the Hue, and keep only low Saturation and high Value, I get:
Then you can easily find connected components, and discard blobs smaller than a threshold th_blob_size. Resulting rectangles are (in green):
You can eventually apply other filtering stage to account for more difficult situations, but for this image removing small blobs is enough. Please post other images if you need something more robust in general.
Code:
#include <opencv2/opencv.hpp>
#include <iostream>
using namespace cv;
using namespace std;
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
Mat3b img = imread("path_to_image");
int th_blob_size = 100;
Mat3b hsv;
cvtColor(img, hsv, COLOR_BGR2HSV);
Mat1b mask;
inRange(hsv, Scalar(0, 0, 220), Scalar(180, 30, 255), mask);
vector<vector<Point>> contours;
findContours(mask.clone(), contours, RETR_EXTERNAL, CHAIN_APPROX_NONE);
Mat3b res = img.clone();
for (int i = 0; i < contours.size(); ++i)
{
// Remove small blobs
if (contours[i].size() < th_blob_size)
{
continue;
}
Rect box = boundingRect(contours[i]);
rectangle(res, box, Scalar(0,255,0), 1);
}
imshow("Result", res);
waitKey();
return 0;
}

Answer 3

Are you sure you are only finding one contour or are you only drawing one contour? It doesn't look like you are looping in the drawing routine so you will only ever draw the first one that is found.
I have a blog, long since dead, that may provide you some good direction on this: http://workingwithcomputervision.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/game-player-step-2-finding-game-board.html
Should the link die I believe this is the most relevant part of the article which relates to drawing contours:
//Draw contours
for (int i = 0; i < contours.size(); i++) {
Scalar color = Scalar(0, 255, 0);
drawContours(drawing, contours, i, color, 2, 8, hierarchy, 0, Point());
}
I notice you are using bounding rectangles for the drawing. Here is an alternative drawing routine, again from the above link, that does this:
Rect bounds;
Mat drawing = Mat::zeros(purpleOnly.size(), CV_8UC3);
int j = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < contours.size(); i++) {
if (arcLength(contours[i], true) > 500){
Rect temp = boundingRect(contours[i]);
rectangle(drawing, temp, Scalar(255, 0, 0), 2, 8);
if (j == 0) {
bounds = temp;
} else {
bounds = bounds | temp;
}
j++;
}
}
Note that I also do some checks on the size of the contour to filter out noise.