I'm trying to get the difference between a thresholded image and the original image, both of which are grayscale. My logic is that if that there is no difference between the the thresholded image and the original image, then that means that there was nothing to threshold.
So I want to find the difference between the images, and if there is no difference, then I will output a "0" to the user interface I made with my camera, and if there is a difference, then I will output a "1".
I tried using the AbsDiff method and I tried using the MatchTemplate method, but neither of those worked, and I'm out of ideas.
I've searched around the internet and haven't found anything to be of much help. Has anyone does something like this before? Does anyone have any pointers as to what I should do?
I'm not familiar with emgu CV, but to do this type of comparison, I'd iterate over each pixel in the image, and return 'not equal' if any are different between the two images.
(Edit: Logically, this is iterating over each pixel in the image and comparing. For efficiency though, I'd probably get the two image buffers (i.e., of size Width * Height * BytesPerPixel), and use memcmp on them. It's reasonable to assume that memcmp is about as optimized a solution as you're going to get for comparing two large buffers, and you want to avoid a GetPixel or similar accessor.)
Also, I wouldn't characterize this as getting a 'numerical value for the difference'. When you phrase it like that, I think of a range of numeric values: Zero means they're equal, small numbers means they're slightly different, large numbers means they're very different. If all you're looking for is a 0 or 1, then that's a Boolean, not a numerical value. Getting a Boolean value of 'equal'/'not equal' is much easier than attempting to quantify how much two images are different.
My emguCV knowledge isn't extensive but have you tried using the emguCV's Cmp method to create a difference mask and then CountNonzero to find out if there is in fact a difference.
Related
Firstly, I am totally out of my expertise zone so please bear with me.
I developed a fluid dynamic engine with 5 exposed parameters (say A,B,C,D,E). When you give this engine these 5 parameters, it does magic and give out a value 'Z'.
I want to write a script which can explore which combinations of A-E give lowest (or close to lowest) value of Z.
I know optimization algorithm exists, but from all of my search for examples, they use some function.
So I guess my function would simply be minimize Z? But where do A-E go?
Not really an answer, but some questions and ideas that might help you think through the best way to address this. We have no understanding of how big a range of values needs to be explored for those parameters, or how Z behaves, so this is very vague...
If you look at the values of Z for given values of A...E, does the value of Z jump around a lot for small changes on the parameter values, or does the Z value change reasonably smoothly?
If the Z value is not too eratic you could try some kind of gradient descent approach using calculated values of Z for some values of the parameters to approximate the gradient - suppose changing the value of 'A' from 1 to 2 gives a better change in the Z value than a similar size change in the other parameters, then try other values of A while keeping the other parameters fixed until you find a value of A that gives the best value of Z. Then try changing the other parameter values to see which one gives the steepest descent and try to find some better value for that parameter. Repeat this process until you can't find any improvement and you will have found a (local) minimum. You could then start at a different place in your parameter space and try again - you will probably find several local minima, and may just choose the best of those. Not provably optimal but may be good enough. Of course you can get clever and use things like conjugate gradients, Newton-Raphson or similar if Z is smooth enough.
If the Z values are very eratic, then you might have to just do some sampling of the possible combinations of A...E to get values of Z and choose the best you can find. Again you might do that in some systematic way (e.g. points on a grid in your parameter space) or entirely at random, or a combination of both.
If you find that there are 'clusters' of good solutions with similar values of the parameters then maybe some kind of local search would help - the idea is that there is often a better solution in the local neighbourhood of a known good solution. So maybe try perturbing your parameter values a bit from a known solution to see if that can lead to a better solution - either by some gradient descent method or by random sampling.
Unfortunately, if your Z calculation is complex, then any method using it as a black box will likely be slow as it will need to be re-evaluated many times.
You could use a Genetic Algorithm, where your chromosomes are formed with the 5 candidate values of the variables you have to optimize, to minimize Z, and your optimization/fitness "function" is the simulation itself outputting Z.
Other viable alternatives are Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm or Ant Colony Optimization. All of those are usable algortihms for that kind of optimization problem.
Here is what I want to do:
keep a reference curve unchanged (only shift and stretch a query curve)
constrain how many elements are duplicated
keep both start and end open
I tried:
dtw(ref_curve,query_curve,step_pattern=asymmetric,open_end=True,open_begin=True)
but I cannot constrain how the query curve is stretched
dtw(ref_curve,query_curve,step_pattern=mvmStepPattern(10))
it didn’t do anything to the curves!
dtw(ref_curve,query_curve,step_pattern=rabinerJuangStepPattern(4, "c"),open_end=True, open_begin=True)
I liked this one the most but in some cases it shifts the query curve more than needed...
I read the paper (https://www.jstatsoft.org/article/view/v031i07) and the API but still don't quite understand how to achieve what I want. Any other options to constrain number of elements that are duplicated? I would appreciate your help!
to clarify: we are talking about functions provided by the DTW suite packages at dynamictimewarping.github.io. The question is in fact language-independent (and may be more suited to the Cross-validated Stack Exchange).
The pattern rabinerJuangStepPattern(4, "c") you have found does in fact satisfy your requirements:
it's asymmetric, and each step advances the reference by exactly one step
it's slope-limited between 1/2 and 2
it's type "c", so can be normalized in a way that allows open-begin and open-end
If you haven't already, check out dtw.rabinerJuangStepPattern(4, "c").plot().
It goes without saying that in all cases you are getting is the optimal alignment, i.e. the one with the least accumulated distance among all allowed paths.
As an alternative, you may consider the simpler asymmetric recursion -- as your first attempt above -- constrained with a global warping window: see dtw.window and the window_type argument. This provides constraints of a different shape (and flexible size), which might suit your specific case.
PS: edited to add that the asymmetricP2 recursion is also similar to RJ-4c, but with a more constrained slope.
I'm trying to find some exif data in an image.
So first I need to find the number 0x45786966 ('Exif' as unsignedInt32) and store the offset.
The next two bytes should be zeros and after that the endianness as unsignedInt16 (either 0x4d4d or 0x4949) which should be stored too.
I can get the image as Bytes with the elm/file module.
But how do I search the 'Exif' start and parse the endianness in those Bytes?
I looked at the loop-example from elm/bytes but do not fully understand it.
First it reads the length of a list (unsignedInt32) and then it reads byte by byte?
How would this work if I want to read unsignedInt32s instead of bytes?
How do I set an offset to indicate where functions like unsignedInt32 should read next?
The example is talking about structured data with a known size field at the start. In your case, what you want to do is a search, so it is a rather different problem.
The problem is elm/bytes isn't really designed to handle searching. If you can guarantee the part you are looking for will be byte aligned, it may well be possible to do this, but given just what you have said, there isn't an easy way, as you can't iterate bit-by-bit.
You would have to read in values without alignment and then manually search for the part of the number you want within that. Given the difficulty and inefficiency of that approach, I would recommend using ports instead for that use case.
If you can guarantee that what you are searching for will be byte-aligned (or better yet, aligned to the length of your number), you can decode a byte at a time until you find what you are looking for. There is no way to read from a given offset, if you want to read to a certain point, you'd need to read and throw away values.
To do this, you would want to set up a loop where your state contains how much of the value you are looking for you have found. Each step, you check if you have the whole thing (success), you have the next part (continue), or you have something different (reset the state to search from the start again). If you reach the end without finding it, you have failed.
I'm working on a small design project, part of which involved writing out text in a given font such that the letters of a word are just touching each other on their right and left sides.
I've thought of implementing this as follows - create GlyphVectors of two letters, create Shape objects using vector.getOutline(), then create Area objects and intersect them.
The only thing I'm missing with this method is the ability to shift the second letter to the right until the intersect is empty.
Is there a way to do this, or do I need to use a different approach?
TIA
eta: ok, I've figured out I can use AffineTransform. Now, is there a way to tell the size (surface area) of the Area created by the intersection of two letters?
How precise do you want this to be? Pixel precision is much easier to attain than vector precision. Have you considered linearisation (usually done through
public PathIterator getPathIterator(AffineTransform at, double flatness)
) of outlines and then doing search in opposite directions among all points? This seems to be the most obvious solution even though it is not vector-precise.
Approximate program behavior:
I have a map image with data associated with the map indicated by RGB index. The data has been populated into an MS Access database. I imported the information in the database into my program as an array and sorted them to go in the order I want the program to run.
I want the program to find the nearest pixel that has a different color from the incumbent pixel being compared. (Colors are stored as string attributes of object Pixel)
First question: Should I use integers to represent my colors instead of string? Would this make the comparison function run significantly faster?
In order to find the nearest pixel of different color, the program begins with all 8 adjacent pixels around the incumbent. If a nonMatch is not found, it then continues onto the next "degree", and in this fashion, it spirals out from the incumbent pixel until it hits a nonMatch. When found, the color of the nonMatch is saved as an attribute of incumbent. After I find the nonMatch for each of the Pixels, the data is re-inserted into the database
The program accomplishes what I want in the manner I've written it, but it is very very slow. After 24 hours, I am only about 3% through with execution.
Question Two: Does my program behavior sound about right? Is this algorithm you would use if you had to accomplish this task?
Question Three: Would it be appropriate for me to use threads in order to finish execution of the program faster? How exactly does that work? (I am brand new to threads, but know a little of the syntax)
Question Four: Would it be more "intelligent" for my program to find the nonMatch for each pixel and insert it into the database immediately after finding it? (I'm making a guess that this would be good in multi-threading, because while one record is accessing the database (to insert), another record is accessing the array of pixels (shared global variable in program).
Question Five: If threading is a good idea, I'm guessing I would split the records up into more manageable chunks (i.e. quarters), and have each thread run the same functions for their specified number of records? Am I close at all?
Please let me know if I can clarify or provide code samples, I just figured that this is more of a conceptual topic so do not want to overburden the post.
1.) Yes, integers compare much faster than strings. Additionally the y use much less memory
2.) I would adapt the algorithm in this way:
E.g.: #1: Let's say, for pixel(87,23) you found the nearest nonMatch to be (88,24) at degree=1 - you can immediately invert the relation and record, that the nearest nonMatch to (88,24) is (87,23). On degree=1 you finished 2 pixels with 1 search.
E.g. #2: Let's say, for pixel (17,18) you found the nearest nonMatch to be (17,20) at degree=2. You can immediately record, that all pixels, that border on both (16,19), (17,19) and (18,19) have the nearest noMatch (17,20) at degree=1, and that one of them is the nearest noMatch to (17,20). On degree=2 (or higher), you finished 5 pixels with 1 search.
3.) Using threads is a two-sided sword: You can do searches in parallel, but you need locking if you write to your array. So this depends on how many CPU cores you can throw at the problem. If this is 3 or more, threads will surely speed up the search.
4.) The results from 2.) make it necessary to mark a pixel as "done" in your array, as you might have finished up to 5 pixels with 1 search. I recommend you put those into a queue and use a dedicated thread to write the queue back into the database: MS Access can't handle concurrent updates, so a single database writer thread looks like a good idea.
5.) I recommend you NOT chunk up the array: You will run into problems with pixels on the edges of a chunk having their nearest nonMatch in a different chunk. Instead if you use e.g. 4 Threads, let them run 1.) From NW corner E, then S 2.) From SE Corner W, then N 3.) From NE Corner S, then W 4. From SW Corner N, then E
Yes. Using a integer would make it much faster
You can reuse the work you have done for previous pixel. Eg. If (a,b) is the nearest non-equal pixel of (x,y), it is likely that points around (x,y) might also have (a,b) as the nearest non-equal pixel
You can use different threads to work on different pixels instead of dividing searching for one pixel
IMHO, steps 1&2 should make your program much faster and you might not need multi-threading.
Yes, I'd convert colour strings to Integers for speed, or even Color structures if you intend to display them on the screen.
Don't work directly with the database if you can avoid it. Copy the necessary data out of the database into an array before you start, and copy your results back when you're finished.