OpenCV-Python dense SIFT - python

OpenCV has very good documentation on generating SIFT descriptors, but this is a version of "weak SIFT", where the key points are detected by the original Lowe algorithm. The OpenCV example reads something like:
img = cv2.imread('home.jpg')
gray= cv2.cvtColor(img,cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
sift = cv2.SIFT()
kp = sift.detect(gray,None)
kp,des = sift.compute(gray,kp)
What I'm looking for is strong/dense SIFT, which does not detect keypoints but instead calculates SIFT descriptors for a set of patches (e.g. 16x16 pixels, 8 pixels padding) covering an image as a grid. As I understand it, there are two ways to do this in OpenCV:
I could divide the image in a grid myself, and somehow convert those patches to KeyPoints
I could use a grid-based feature detector
In other words, I'd have to replace the sift.detect() line with something that gives me the keypoints I require.
My problem is that the rest of the OpenCV documentation, especially wrt Python, is severely lacking, so I have no idea how to achieve either of these things. I see in the C++ documentation that there are keypoint detectors for grid, but I don't know how to use these from Python.
The alternative is to switch to VLFeat, which has a very good DSift/PHOW implementation but means that I'll have to switch from python to matlab.
Any ideas? Thanks.

You can use Dense Sift in opencv 2.4.6 <.
Creates a feature detector by its name.
cv2.FeatureDetector_create(detectorType)
Then "Dense" string in place of detectorType
eg:-
dense=cv2.FeatureDetector_create("Dense")
kp=dense.detect(imgGray)
kp,des=sift.compute(imgGray,kp)

I'm not sure what your goal is here, but be warned, the SIFT descriptor calculation is extremely slow and was never designed to be used in a dense fashion. That being said, OpenCV makes it fairly trivial to do so.
Basically instead of using sift.detect(), you just fill in the keypoint array yourself by making a grid a keypoints however dense you want them. Then a descriptor will be calculated for each keypoint when you pass the keypoints to sift.compute().
Depending on the size of your image and the speed of your machine, this might take a very long time. If copmutational time is a factor, I suggest you look at some of the binary descriptors OpenCV has to offer.

Inspite of the OpenCV way being the standard, it was too slow for me. So for that, I used pyvlfeat, which is basically python bindings to VL-FEAT. The functions carry similar syntax as the Matlab functions

Related

What is the best way to track an object in a video?

I'm trying to learn computer vision and more specifically open-cv in python.
I want to make a program that would track my barbell in a video and show me its path. (I know apps like this exists but I want to make it myself). I tried using the Canny edge detection and the HoughCircles functions but I seem to get everything but a good result.
I have been using this code to find the edges of my image:
gray = cv.cvtColor(src=img, code=cv.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
blur = cv.blur(gray, (2,2))
canny = cv.Canny(blur, 60, 60)
And then this code to find the circle:
circles = cv.HoughCircles(canny, cv.HOUGH_GRADIENT, dp=2, minDist=1000, circles=None,maxRadius=50)
This is the result:
Result
left = original image with detected circle // right = canny image
Is this the right way to go or should I use another method?
Train the YOLO model for the barbell to detect barbel object is better than anything you tried with OpenCV. You need at least 500 images. Those images can be found on the internet easily. This tutorial is kick start tutorial on YOLO. Let's give a try.
If you tweak the parameters of HoughCircles it may recognize the barbell [EDIT: but with more preprocessing, gamma correction, blurring etc., so better not], however OpenCV has many algorithms for such object tracking - only a region from the image has to be specified first (if that's OK).
In your case the object is always visible and is not changing much, so I guess many of the available algorithms would work fine.
OpenCV has a built-in function for selection:
initBB = cv2.selectROI("Frame", frame, fromCenter=False, showCrosshair=True)
See this tutorial for tracking: https://www.pyimagesearch.com/2018/07/30/opencv-object-tracking/
The summary from the author suggestion is:
CSRT Tracker: Discriminative Correlation Filter (with Channel and Spatial Reliability). Tends to be more accurate than KCF but slightly slower. (minimum OpenCV 3.4.2)
Use CSRT when you need higher object tracking accuracy and can tolerate slower FPS throughput
I guess accuracy is what you want, if it is for offline usage.
Can you share a sample video?
What's your problem exactly? Why do you track the barbell? Do you need semantic segmentation or normal detection? These are important questions. Canny is a very basic approach It' needs a very stable background to use it. That's why there is deep learning to handle that kind of problem If we need to talk about deep learning you can use MaskRCNN, yolvoV4, etc. there are many available solutions out there.

Getting started with denoising elements of a 200x200 numpy array

I have a 200x200 numpy array that has a shape in it which I can see when I graph it using matplotlib's imshow() function. However, there is also a lot of noise added in that picture. I am trying to use openCV to emphasize the shape and denoise the image. But it keeps throwing error messages that I don't understand. What should I do to get started on the denoising problem. The shape is visible to me as I see it but extra noise was added using the np.random.randint() function on top of the image. I want to reduce that noise
Here are some tutorials about image denoising techniques available in opencv.
Blurring out the noise
The most basic is applying a blur to average out the random noise. This will have the negative effect that the edges in the image will not be as sharp as originally. Depending on your application, this might be fine. Depending on the amount of noise, you can chance the size of the filter k. A larger value will produce a blurrier image with less noise.
k = 5
filtered_image = cv.blur(img,(k,k))
Advanced denoising
Alternatively, you can use more advanced techniques such as Non-local Means Denoising. This applies averaging across similar patches in the image. This technique has a few more parameters to tune to your specific application which you can read about here. (There are different versions of this function for greyscale and colour images, as well as for image sequences).
luminosity_filter_strength = 10
colour_filter_strength = 10
template_window_size = 7
search_window_size = 21
filtered_image = cv.fastNlMeansDenoisingColored(img,
luminosity_filter_strength,
colour_filter_strength,
template_window_size,
search_window_size)
I solved the problem using Scikit Image. They have very accessible documentation page for new comers and the error messages are a lot easier to understand. As for my problem I had to use Scikit Image's restoration library which has a lot of denoising functions much like openCV however the examples and the easy to understand error messages really helped. Playing around with Bilateral filters and Non-local Means Denoising solved the problem for me.

Best way to find background - Image processing Python

I am working on a project where I have to find the background of a given gray-scale image.
I did several kinds of research on the internet and I've found some algorithms using OpenCV library (like the following: https://docs.opencv.org/3.0-beta/doc/py_tutorials/py_video/py_bg_subtraction/py_bg_subtraction.html#py-background-subtraction).
This kind of approach doesn't work for me.
The image I want to elaborate is:
As you can see it is in gray-scale and we see the "gray static" background. I would love to see only the nucleus of the cell (the image will improve resolution and quality in the time, this is a pretty raw one)
I tried to subtract the 2D magnitude FFT of the background from the main image but the results is not good:
What I am asking is: What kind of process do you suggest to use to eliminate background?
Did you already try watershed algorithm ? I saw on a paper it's already used and improved for cell image segmentation.
Background subtraction won't work for your images because your background is not consistent. image's SNR is too low!
So you have 2 options:
1) Using deep learning method (like UNET) if you have enough data
2) Using bilateral filter then, some methods like active contour or GLCM Texture Feature or k-means clustering.

How to use opencv for poster detection

Is it possible to use opencv for better detection of posters (see example image)? I have tried following approach:
create mask of higher intensity pixels (higher v value)
apply erosion and dilation to remove noise and make smooth.
findContours and draw bounding boxes.
Result of this approach is only good if there are lights behind the posters(poster glowing). However, for my goal is to detect posters even when its not in the highest intensities. Please anyone guide me about it.
First thought was neural nets... and openCV has an implementation:
http://docs.opencv.org/2.4/modules/ml/doc/neural_networks.html
They call them 'Multi Layer Perceptrons'
Other machine learning examples in openCV here:
http://bytefish.de/blog/machine_learning_opencv/
If you know how the posters, you want to detect, look like, you could search for keypoints and match them by their descriptors.
See the example Features2D + Homography to find a known object in the documentation for code.

How to align multiple camera images using opencv

Imagine someone taking a burst shot from camera, he will be having multiple images, but since no tripod or stand was used, images taken will be slightly different.
How can I align them such that they overlay neatly and crop out the edges
I have searched a lot, but most of the solutions were either making a 3D reconstruction or using matlab.
e.g. https://github.com/royshil/SfM-Toy-Library
Since I'm very new to openCV, I will prefer a easy to implement solution
I have generated many datasets by manually rotating and cropping images in MSPaint but any link containing corresponding datasets(slightly rotated and translated images) will also be helpful.
EDIT:I found a solution here
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/24809/Image-Alignment-Algorithms
which gives close approximations to rotation and translation vectors.
How can I do better than this?
It depends on what you mean by "better" (accuracy, speed, low memory requirements, etc). One classic approach is to align each frame #i (with i>2) with the first frame, as follows:
Local feature detection, for instance via SIFT or SURF (link)
Descriptor extraction (link)
Descriptor matching (link)
Alignment estimation via perspective transformation (link)
Transform image #i to match image 1 using the estimated transformation (link)

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