how to remove a stamp from an image with opencv - opencv

Question

I am working on a OCR project, and in the preprocessing, some RED stamps need to be removed, so that the text near the stamps could be detected. I try a lot of methods(like change the values of pixel, threshold in Red channel) but fail.
Any suggestions are highly appreciated.

Answer 1

Python, C++, Java or what? Since you didn't state the OpenCV implementation you are using, I'm giving my answer in C++.
An option is to use the HSV color space to filter out the range of red values that defines the seal. My approach is to use the CMYK color space to filter everything except the black (or dark) text. It should do a pretty good job on printed media, which is your case.
//read input image:
std::string imageName = "C://opencvImages//seal.png";
cv::Mat imageInput = cv::imread( imageName );
Now, perform the CMYK conversion. OpenCV does not support this operation out of the box, bear with me as I provide the helper function at the end of this post.
//CMYK conversion:
std::vector<cv::Mat> cmyk;
cmyk = rgb2cmyk( imageInput );
//This is the Black channel:
cv::Mat blackChannel = cmyk[3].clone();
This is the image of the black channel; it is nice how everything that is not black (or dark) practically disappears!
Now, optionally, enhance the result applying brightness and contrast adjustment. Just try to separate the text from the background a little bit better; we want some defined pixel distributions to get a nice binary image.
//Brightness and contrast adjustment:
float alpha = 2.0;
float beta = -50.0;
contrastBrightnessAdjustment( blackChannel, alpha, beta );
Again, OpenCV does not offer brightness and contrast adjustment out of the box; however, its implementation is very easy. Hold on a little bit, and let me show you the result of this operation:
Nice. Let's Otsu-threshold this bad boy to get a nice binary image containing the clean text:
cv::threshold( blackChannel, binaryImage ,0, 255, cv::THRESH_OTSU );
This is what you get:
Now, the RGB to CMYK conversion function. I'm using the following implementation. The function receives an RGB image and returns a vector containing each of the CMYK channels
std::vector<cv::Mat> rgb2cmyk( cv::Mat& inputImage ){
std::vector<cv::Mat> cmyk;
for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
cmyk.push_back( cv::Mat( inputImage.size(), CV_8UC1 ) );
}
std::vector<cv::Mat> inputRGB;
cv::split( inputImage, inputRGB );
for (int i = 0; i < inputImage.rows; i++)
{
for (int j = 0; j < inputImage.cols; j++)
{
float r = (int)inputRGB[2].at<uchar>(i, j) / 255.;
float g = (int)inputRGB[1].at<uchar>(i, j) / 255.;
float b = (int)inputRGB[0].at<uchar>(i, j) / 255.;
float k = std::min(std::min(1-r, 1-g), 1-b);
cmyk[0].at<uchar>(i, j) = (1 - r - k) / (1 - k) * 255.;
cmyk[1].at<uchar>(i, j) = (1 - g - k) / (1 - k) * 255.;
cmyk[2].at<uchar>(i, j) = (1 - b - k) / (1 - k) * 255.;
cmyk[3].at<uchar>(i, j) = k * 255.;
}
}
return cmyk;
}
And the contrastBrightnessAdjustment function is this, implemented using pointer arithmetic. The function receives a grayscale image and applies the linear transformation via the alpha and beta parameters:
void contrastBrightnessAdjustment( cv::Mat inputImage, float alpha, int beta ){
cv::MatIterator_<cv::Vec3b> it, end;
for (it = inputImage.begin<cv::Vec3b>(), end = inputImage.end<cv::Vec3b>(); it != end; ++it) {
uchar &pixel = (*it)[0];
pixel = cv::saturate_cast<uchar>(alpha*pixel+beta);
}
}