How get contours between objects with OpenCV Watershed? - c++

Question

I use OpenCV Watershed with my image:
#include "opencv2/opencv.hpp"
#include <string>
using namespace cv;
using namespace std;
class WatershedSegmenter{
private:
cv::Mat markers;
public:
void setMarkers(cv::Mat& markerImage)
{
markerImage.convertTo(markers, CV_32S);
}
cv::Mat process(cv::Mat &image)
{
cv::watershed(image, markers);
markers.convertTo(markers,CV_8U);
return markers;
}
};
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
cv::Mat image = cv::imread("d:\\projekty\\OpenCV\\trainData\\base01.jpg"); //http://i.imgur.com/sEWFHfY.jpg
cv::Mat blank(image.size(),CV_8U,cv::Scalar(0xFF));
cv::Mat dest;
imshow("originalimage", image);
// Create markers image
cv::Mat markers(image.size(),CV_8U,cv::Scalar(-1));
//Rect(topleftcornerX, topleftcornerY, width, height);
//top rectangle
markers(Rect(0,0,image.cols, 5)) = Scalar::all(1);
//bottom rectangle
markers(Rect(0,image.rows-5,image.cols, 5)) = Scalar::all(1);
//left rectangle
markers(Rect(0,0,5,image.rows)) = Scalar::all(1);
//right rectangle
markers(Rect(image.cols-5,0,5,image.rows)) = Scalar::all(1);
//centre rectangle
int centreW = image.cols/4;
int centreH = image.rows/4;
markers(Rect((image.cols/2)-(centreW/2),(image.rows/2)-(centreH/2), centreW, centreH)) = Scalar::all(2);
markers.convertTo(markers,CV_BGR2GRAY);
imshow("markers", markers);
//Create watershed segmentation object
WatershedSegmenter segmenter;
segmenter.setMarkers(markers);
cv::Mat wshedMask = segmenter.process(image);
cv::Mat mask;
convertScaleAbs(wshedMask, mask, 1, 0);
double thresh = threshold(mask, mask, 1, 255, THRESH_BINARY);
bitwise_and(image, image, dest, mask);
dest.convertTo(dest,CV_8U);
imshow("final_result", dest);
cv::waitKey(0);
return 0;
}
But this give me only individual mask. I also tried to create markers as two points - the result was only one mask. Is it possible with OpenCV to separate cells (objects) with contours as is in example http://biodynamics.ucsd.edu/ir/ ?
If not, is it possible create as result mask with values: 1 for first object, 2 - for second, .. 99 for 99 ?

Answer 1

after performing
cv::watershed(image, markers);
the markers image will be -1 at the boundaries of the regions, and will be 1 in the region corresponding to the seed that was labelled 1, and will be 2 in the region corresponding to the seed that was labelled 2, and so on. So you can do something like this:
cv::Mat region1 = markers==1;

Answer 2

I use the following approach for extracting objects countours after watershed segmentation. Watershed output is one markers image containing a segment code of each pixel. I create a binary mask image for each single object segment from the markers image. That can be done in one iteration over all pixels of the markers image. For the core "for loop", see opencv example https://github.com/Itseez/opencv/blob/master/samples/cpp/watershed.cpp. I have all the objects masks stored in a vector <Mat>. Then I run findContours on every such mask -> contour of each object. See http://docs.opencv.org/doc/tutorials/imgproc/shapedescriptors/find_contours/find_contours.html. You just don't need to use the edge detector Canny as the mask images are already binary.