Counting the squama of lizards - algorithm

A biologist friend of mine asked me if I could help him make a program to count the squama (is this the right translation?) of lizards.
He sent me some images and I tried some things on Matlab. For some images it's much harder than other, for example when there are darker(black) regions. At least with my method. I'm sure I can get some useful help here. How should I improve this? Have I taken the right approach?
These are some of the images.
I got the best results by following Image Processing and Counting using MATLAB. It's basically turning the image into Black and white and then threshold it. But I did add a bit of erosion.
Here's the code:
img0=imread('C:...\pic.png');
img1=rgb2gray(img0);
%The output image BW replaces all pixels in the input image with luminance greater than level with the value 1 (white) and replaces all other pixels with the value 0 (black). Specify level in the range [0,1].
img2=im2bw(img1,0.65);%(img1,graythresh(img1));
imshow(img2)
figure;
%erode
se = strel('line',6,0);
img2 = imerode(img2,se);
se = strel('line',6,90);
img2 = imerode(img2,se);
imshow(img2)
figure;
imshow(img1, 'InitialMag', 'fit')
% Make a truecolor all-green image. I use this later to overlay it on top of the original image to show which elements were counted (with green)
green = cat(3, zeros(size(img1)),ones(size(img1)), zeros(size(img1)));
hold on
h = imshow(green);
hold off
%counts the elements now defined by black spots on the image
[B,L,N,A] = bwboundaries(img2);
%imshow(img2); hold on;
set(h, 'AlphaData', img2)
text(10,10,strcat('\color{green}Objects Found:',num2str(length(B))))
figure;
%this produces a new image showing each counted element and its count id on top of it.
imshow(img2); hold on;
colors=['b' 'g' 'r' 'c' 'm' 'y'];
for k=1:length(B),
boundary = B{k};
cidx = mod(k,length(colors))+1;
plot(boundary(:,2), boundary(:,1), colors(cidx),'LineWidth',2);
%randomize text position for better visibility
rndRow = ceil(length(boundary)/(mod(rand*k,7)+1));
col = boundary(rndRow,2); row = boundary(rndRow,1);
h = text(col+1, row-1, num2str(L(row,col)));
set(h,'Color',colors(cidx),'FontSize',14,'FontWeight','bold');
end
figure;
spy(A);
And these are some of the results. One the top-left corner you can see how many were counted.
Also, I think it's useful to have the counted elements marked in green so at least the user can know which ones have to be counted manually.

There is one route you should consider: watershed segmentation. Here is a quick and dirty example with your first image (it assumes you have the IP toolbox):
raw=rgb2gray(imread('lCeL8.jpg'));
Icomp = imcomplement(raw);
I3 = imhmin(Icomp,20);
L = watershed(I3);
%%
imagesc(L);
axis image
Result shown with a colormap:
You can then count the cells as follows:
count = numel(unique(L));
One of the advantages is that it can be directly fed to regionprops and give you all the nice details about the individual 'squama':
r=regionprops(L, 'All');
imshow(raw);
for k=2:numel(r)
if r(k).Area>100 % I chose 100 to filter out the objects with a small are.
rectangle('Position',r(k).BoundingBox, 'LineWidth',1, 'EdgeColor','b', 'Curvature', [1 1]);
end
end
Which you could use to monitor over/under segmentation:
Note: special thanks to #jucestain for helping with the proper access to the fields in the r structure here

Related

How do I save just figure image without any graduation and numbers on x, y axis?

I used matlab code.
img = imread('cmap3.png')
map = jet(256)
ind = rgb2ind(img,map)
colormap(map)
cm = colormap('gray)
image(ind)
Through above code, I got the .
I want to save just the gray scale image without any graduations and numbers on x,y axis.
How do I remove them and save gray scale image?
If you use imwrite, you won't save the axes' labels.
For actual plots, there exists a different solutions, eg. described here: set the axis to start at the very left bottom corner so that there is no space left for descriptions: set(gca, 'Position',[0 0 1 1]). Than you can even use print to save the image/figure.

How can I crop several and random batches from an image?

I have an image of size (224 x 224) and I want to extract a number of random patches from the original image using Matlab (let say 5 patches). One of these patch should be at the centre of the original image. The patch size is (128 x 128).
I have tried this to crop just the centre patch:
II = imread('img.png')
[p3, p4] = size(II);
q1 = 50; // size of the crop box
i3_start = floor((p3-q1)/2); % or round instead of floor; using neither gives warning
i3_stop = i3_start + q1;
i4_start = floor((p4-q1)/2);
i4_stop = i4_start + q1;
II = II(i3_start:i3_stop, i4_start:i4_stop, :);
figure ,imshow(II);
I've tried to accomplish this in the following way:
A=imread('Lena.bmp');%sample image
rnd_x = randperm(size(A,1)-128,5);%choose 5 tandom unique points on x-axis
rnd_y = randperm(size(A,2)-128,5);%choose 5 tandom unique points on y-axis
for ii = 1:5
piece{ii} = A((rnd_x(ii):(rnd_x(ii)+127)),(rnd_y(ii):(rnd_y(ii)+127)),1:3);%Convert chosen numbers to image pieces
figure(ii)
imshow(piece{ii});
end
This takes image like this:
This gives 5 pics like this:
Here our image size is 512x512. So, if we want to cut the 128x128 piece from it, we need to seek from 385x385 grid (512-127). We find 5 random points on the grid expressed in rnd_x and rnd_y. Finally, we take the found points as the upper-left corners of the pieces and construct 128x128 images from them. The 5 pieces are recorded in piece cell array.
EDIT: forgot to add how to extract the center patch. The following code performs the task:
A=imread('Lena.bmp');%sample image
if mod(size(A,1),2)
A = A(1:(end-1),:,:);
end
if mod(size(A,2),2)
A = A(:,1:(end-1),:);
end
while size(A,1) > 128
A = A(2:(end-1),:,:);
end
while size(A,2) > 128
A = A(:,2:(end-1),:);
end
imshow(A)
The code removes one pixel from each side until we get the 128-pixel image.
Careful! In your code, if you load a color image (3 channels) and call size with only two outputs, you will have an incorrect value for p4.
Use three outputs when loading images to avoid this problem:
[nrows ncols nchannels] = size(II);
Your code correctly extracts a (q1 x q1) from the center of the image.
If you want a random patch just generate a random integer for the top-left column of the patch with the correct range to ensure that it doesn't fall outside the image. You can generate random integers using the function randi.
i3_start = randi(floor((p3-q1));
i4_start = randi(floor((p4-q1));
The rest of the code is the same. If you want several patches you can generate several values when calling the randi function with a second and third parameter for the desired number of rows and columns. And then process each patch inside a for loop.
BTW: In the third line you have an invalid Matlab comment (use % for comments). Also you should name your variables with more intuitive names.
Eg: [nrows ncols nchannels] = size(II);

Create mask from bwtraceboundary in Matlab

I'm trying to create a mask (or similar result) in order to erase pieces of a binary image that are not attached to the object surrounded by the boundary. I saw this thread (http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/120579-converting-boundary-to-mask) to do this from bwboundaries, but I'm having trouble making suitable changes to it. My goal is to use this code to isolate the part of this topography map that is connected, and get rid of the extra pieces. I need to retain the structure inside of the bounded area, as I was then going to use bwboundaries to create additional boundary lines of the main object's "interior" structure.
The following is my code to first create the single boundary line by searching for the bottom left pixel of the black area to begin the trace. It just looks for the first column of the image that isn't completely white and selects the last black pixel. The second section was then to create the inner boundary lines. Note that I am attempting this two step process, but if there is a way to do it with only one I'd like to hear that solution as well. Ultimately I just want boundaries for the main, large black area and the holes inside of it, while getting rid of the extra pieces hanging around.
figName='Images/BookTrace_1';
BW = imread([figName,'.png']);
BW=im2bw(BW);
imshow(BW,[]);
for j=1:size(BW,2)
if sum(BW(:,j))~=sum(BW(:,1))
corner=BW(:,j);
c=j-1;
break
end
end
r=find(corner==0);
r=r(end);
outline = bwtraceboundary(BW,[r c],'W',8,Inf,'counterclockwise');
hold on;
plot(outline(:,2),outline(:,1),'g','LineWidth',2);
[B,L] = bwboundaries(BW);
hold on
for k = 1:length(B)
boundary = B{k};
plot(boundary(:,2), boundary(:,1), 'g', 'LineWidth', 2)
end
Any suggestions or tips are greatly appreciated. If there are questions, please let me know and I'll update the post. Thank you!
EDIT: For clarification, my end goal is as in the below image. I need to trace all of the outer and inner boundaries attached to the main object, while eliminating any spare small pieces that are not attached to it.
It's very simple. I actually wouldn't use the code above and use the image processing toolbox instead. There's a built-in function to remove any white pixels that touch the border of the image. Use the imclearborder function.
The function will return a new binary image where any pixels that were touching the borders of the image will be removed. Given your code, it's very simply:
out = imclearborder(BW);
Using the above image as an example, I'm going to threshold it so that the green lines are removed... or rather merged with the other white pixels, and I'll call the above function:
BW = imread('http://i.stack.imgur.com/jhLOw.png'); %// Read from StackOverflow
BW = im2bw(BW); %// Convert to binary
out = imclearborder(BW); %// Remove pixels along border
imshow(out); %// Show image
We get:
If you want the opposite effect, where you want to retain the boundaries and remove everything else inside, simply create a new image by copying the original one and use the output from the above to null these pixel locations.
out2 = BW; %// Make copy
out2(out) = 0; %// Set pixels not belonging to boundary to 0
imshow(out2); %// Show image
We thus get:
Edit
Given the above desired output, I believe I know what you want now. You wish to fill in the holes for each group of pixels and trace along the boundary of the desired result. The fact that we have this split up into two categories is going to be useful. For those objects that are in the interior, use the imfill function and specify the holes option to fill in any of the black holes so that they're white. For the objects that exterior, this will need a bit of work. What I would do is invert the image so that pixels that are black become white and vice-versa, then use the bwareaopen function to clear away any pixels whose area is below a certain amount. This will remove those small isolated black regions that are along the border of the exterior regions. Once you're done, re-invert the image. The effect of this is that the small holes will be eliminated. I chose a threshold of 500 pixels for the area... seems to work well.
Therefore, using the above variables as reference, do this:
%// Fill holes for both regions separately
out_fill = imfill(out, 'holes');
out2_fill = ~bwareaopen(~out2, 500);
%// Merge together
final_out = out_fill | out2_fill;
This is what we get:
If you want a nice green border like in your example to illustrate this point, you can do this:
perim = bwperim(final_out);
red = final_out;
green = final_out;
blue = final_out;
red(perim) = 0;
blue(perim) = 0;
out_colour = 255*uint8(cat(3, red, green, blue));
imshow(out_colour);
The above code finds the perimeter of the objects, then we create a new image where the red and blue channels along the perimeter are set to 0, while setting the green channel to 255.
We get this:
You can ignore the green pixel border that surrounds the image. That's just a side effect with the way I'm finding the perimeter along the objects in the image. In fact, the image you supplied to me had a white pixel border that surrounds the whole region, so I'm not sure if that's intended or if that's part of the whole grand scheme of things.
To consolidate into a working example so that you can copy and paste into MATLAB, here's all of the code in one code block:
%// Pre-processing
BW = imread('http://i.stack.imgur.com/jhLOw.png'); %// Read from StackOverflow
BW = im2bw(BW); %// Convert to binary
out = imclearborder(BW); %// Remove pixels along border
%// Obtain pixels that are along border
out2 = BW; %// Make copy
out2(out) = 0; %// Set pixels not belonging to boundary to 0
%// Fill holes for both regions separately
out_fill = imfill(out, 'holes');
out2_fill = ~bwareaopen(~out2, 500);
%// Merge together
final_out = out_fill | out2_fill;
%// Show final output
figure;
imshow(final_out);
%// Bonus - Show perimeter of output in green
perim = bwperim(final_out);
red = final_out;
green = final_out;
blue = final_out;
red(perim) = 0;
blue(perim) = 0;
out_colour = 255*uint8(cat(3, red, green, blue));
figure;
imshow(out_colour);

Remove spacing in matlab subplot

How should i remove the empty space between these images?i need to combine all these images without any space.
bot=imread('bot.jpeg');
for i= 1:25
subplot(5,5,i),imshow(bot);
end
You need to specify axes' 'Position' property when you create them with subplot.
Also, you have to adjust figure aspect ratio to match that of the image, so that all figures fit without vertical or horizontal space.
If you show a different image in each subplot, all images should have the same aspect ratio, otherwise it's not possible for them to fit in the figure without empty spaces.
bot = imread('peppers.png');
for i= 1:25
subplot('Position',[(mod(i-1,5))/5 1-(ceil(i/5))/5 1/5 1/5])
imshow(bot); %// or show a different image on each subplot
end
p = get(gcf,'Position');
k = [size(bot,2) size(bot,1)]/(size(bot,2)+size(bot,1));
set(gcf,'Position',[p(1) p(2) (p(3)+p(4)).*k]) %// adjust figure x and y size
The most canonical way would be to take a look at this answer by bla here. This answer uses a function from the MATLAB File Exchange in order to achieve the answer. However, that requires learning a new function and playing around with the parameters.
If you want something working immediately, instead of showing each subimage in a separate grid on a plot, I would simply create a new image that stacks all of those images together:
bot_new = repmat(bot, [5 5]);
imshow(bot_new);
repmat takes a matrix and duplicates / stacks / tiles itself together for as many rows and as many columns (or in any dimension) that you want. In this case, I chose to stack the image so that there are 5 rows and 5 columns of it. We next show the stacked image together with imshow.
If we used an example image from MATLAB:
bot = imread('onion.png');
If we ran the above code that tiles the images together and showed the image, this is what we get:
I copy the answer from mathworks:
For each subplot, store its handle.
h = subplot(2,3,1);
Then set the 'position' property of h to be anything you want.
p = get(h, 'pos');
This is a 4-element vector [left, bottom, width, height] which
by default is in normalized coordinates (percentage of
figure window). For instance, to add 0.05 units (5% of
figure window) to the width, do this:
p(3) = p(3) + 0.05;
set(h, 'pos', p);
The SUBPLOT command picks standard values for these
parameters, but they could be anything you want. You
could put axes anywhere on the figure you want,
any size you want.
You can check for it:
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/newsreader/view_thread/144116

Resize an image with bilinear interpolation without imresize

I've found some methods to enlarge an image but there is no solution to shrink an image. I'm currently using the nearest neighbor method. How could I do this with bilinear interpolation without using the imresize function in MATLAB?
In your comments, you mentioned you wanted to resize an image using bilinear interpolation. Bear in mind that the bilinear interpolation algorithm is size independent. You can very well use the same algorithm for enlarging an image as well as shrinking an image. The right scale factors to sample the pixel locations are dependent on the output dimensions you specify. This doesn't change the core algorithm by the way.
Before I start with any code, I'm going to refer you to Richard Alan Peters' II digital image processing slides on interpolation, specifically slide #59. It has a great illustration as well as pseudocode on how to do bilinear interpolation that is MATLAB friendly. To be self-contained, I'm going to include his slide here so we can follow along and code it:
Please be advised that this only resamples the image. If you actually want to match MATLAB's output, you need to disable anti-aliasing.
MATLAB by default will perform anti-aliasing on the images to ensure the output looks visually pleasing. If you'd like to compare apples with apples, make sure you disable anti-aliasing when comparing between this implementation and MATLAB's imresize function.
Let's write a function that will do this for us. This function will take in an image (that is read in through imread) which can be either colour or grayscale, as well as an array of two elements - The image you want to resize and the output dimensions in a two-element array of the final resized image you want. The first element of this array will be the rows and the second element of this array will be the columns. We will simply go through this algorithm and calculate the output pixel colours / grayscale values using this pseudocode:
function [out] = bilinearInterpolation(im, out_dims)
%// Get some necessary variables first
in_rows = size(im,1);
in_cols = size(im,2);
out_rows = out_dims(1);
out_cols = out_dims(2);
%// Let S_R = R / R'
S_R = in_rows / out_rows;
%// Let S_C = C / C'
S_C = in_cols / out_cols;
%// Define grid of co-ordinates in our image
%// Generate (x,y) pairs for each point in our image
[cf, rf] = meshgrid(1 : out_cols, 1 : out_rows);
%// Let r_f = r'*S_R for r = 1,...,R'
%// Let c_f = c'*S_C for c = 1,...,C'
rf = rf * S_R;
cf = cf * S_C;
%// Let r = floor(rf) and c = floor(cf)
r = floor(rf);
c = floor(cf);
%// Any values out of range, cap
r(r < 1) = 1;
c(c < 1) = 1;
r(r > in_rows - 1) = in_rows - 1;
c(c > in_cols - 1) = in_cols - 1;
%// Let delta_R = rf - r and delta_C = cf - c
delta_R = rf - r;
delta_C = cf - c;
%// Final line of algorithm
%// Get column major indices for each point we wish
%// to access
in1_ind = sub2ind([in_rows, in_cols], r, c);
in2_ind = sub2ind([in_rows, in_cols], r+1,c);
in3_ind = sub2ind([in_rows, in_cols], r, c+1);
in4_ind = sub2ind([in_rows, in_cols], r+1, c+1);
%// Now interpolate
%// Go through each channel for the case of colour
%// Create output image that is the same class as input
out = zeros(out_rows, out_cols, size(im, 3));
out = cast(out, class(im));
for idx = 1 : size(im, 3)
chan = double(im(:,:,idx)); %// Get i'th channel
%// Interpolate the channel
tmp = chan(in1_ind).*(1 - delta_R).*(1 - delta_C) + ...
chan(in2_ind).*(delta_R).*(1 - delta_C) + ...
chan(in3_ind).*(1 - delta_R).*(delta_C) + ...
chan(in4_ind).*(delta_R).*(delta_C);
out(:,:,idx) = cast(tmp, class(im));
end
Take the above code, copy and paste it into a file called bilinearInterpolation.m and save it. Make sure you change your working directory where you've saved this file.
Except for sub2ind and perhaps meshgrid, everything seems to be in accordance with the algorithm. meshgrid is very easy to explain. All you're doing is specifying a 2D grid of (x,y) co-ordinates, where each location in your image has a pair of (x,y) or column and row co-ordinates. Creating a grid through meshgrid avoids any for loops as we will have generated all of the right pixel locations from the algorithm that we need before we continue.
How sub2ind works is that it takes in a row and column location in a 2D matrix (well... it can really be any amount of dimensions you want), and it outputs a single linear index. If you're not aware of how MATLAB indexes into matrices, there are two ways you can access an element in a matrix. You can use the row and column to get what you want, or you can use a column-major index. Take a look at this matrix example I have below:
A =
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15
If we want to access the number 9, we can do A(2,4) which is what most people tend to default to. There is another way to access the number 9 using a single number, which is A(11)... now how is that the case? MATLAB lays out the memory of its matrices in column-major format. This means that if you were to take this matrix and stack all of its columns together in a single array, it would look like this:
A =
1
6
11
2
7
12
3
8
13
4
9
14
5
10
15
Now, if you want to access element number 9, you would need to access the 11th element of this array. Going back to the interpolation bit, sub2ind is crucial if you want to vectorize accessing the elements in your image to do the interpolation without doing any for loops. As such, if you look at the last line of the pseudocode, we want to access elements at r, c, r+1 and c+1. Note that all of these are 2D arrays, where each element in each of the matching locations in all of these arrays tell us the four pixels we need to sample from in order to produce the final output pixel. The output of sub2ind will also be 2D arrays of the same size as the output image. The key here is that each element of the 2D arrays of r, c, r+1, and c+1 will give us the column-major indices into the image that we want to access, and by throwing this as input into the image for indexing, we will exactly get the pixel locations that we want.
There are some important subtleties I'd like to add when implementing the algorithm:
You need to make sure that any indices to access the image when interpolating outside of the image are either set to 1 or the number of rows or columns to ensure you don't go out of bounds. Actually, if you extend to the right or below the image, you need to set this to one below the maximum as the interpolation requires that you are accessing pixels to one over to the right or below. This will make sure that you're still within bounds.
You also need to make sure that the output image is cast to the same class as the input image.
I ran through a for loop to interpolate each channel on its own. You could do this intelligently using bsxfun, but I decided to use a for loop for simplicity, and so that you are able to follow along with the algorithm.
As an example to show this works, let's use the onion.png image that is part of MATLAB's system path. The original dimensions of this image are 135 x 198. Let's interpolate this image by making it larger, going to 270 x 396 which is twice the size of the original image:
im = imread('onion.png');
out = bilinearInterpolation(im, [270 396]);
figure;
imshow(im);
figure;
imshow(out);
The above code will interpolate the image by increasing each dimension by twice as much, then show a figure with the original image and another figure with the scaled up image. This is what I get for both:
Similarly, let's shrink the image down by half as much:
im = imread('onion.png');
out = bilinearInterpolation(im, [68 99]);
figure;
imshow(im);
figure;
imshow(out);
Note that half of 135 is 67.5 for the rows, but I rounded up to 68. This is what I get:
One thing I've noticed in practice is that upsampling with bilinear has decent performance in comparison to other schemes like bicubic... or even Lanczos. However, when you're shrinking an image, because you're removing detail, nearest neighbour is very much sufficient. I find bilinear or bicubic to be overkill. I'm not sure about what your application is, but play around with the different interpolation algorithms and see what you like out of the results. Bicubic is another story, and I'll leave that to you as an exercise. Those slides I referred you to does have material on bicubic interpolation if you're interested.
Good luck!

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