Approximate image as summation of Gaussians - image-processing

I have an image that looks like the following. I want to approximate the image content as a summation of Gaussian functions, where the Gaussian means represent the most important points in the image and the covariance represent the degree of spread of the image. Is there any algorithm for this purpose?

Related

Approximating true heightmap gradient magnitude with opencv's Sobel filter

I have an image (cv::Mat, type CV_32F) representing grid-sampled height function. The grid has constant raster (dx,dy) per pixel.
I would like to estimate its gradient magnitude. Using OpenCV's Sobel filter, I approximate derivatives like this:
dfdx=zz.Sobel(zz,cv2.CV_32F,1,0,ksize=3,scale=?)
dfdy=zz.Sobel(zz,cv2.CV_32F,0,1,ksize=3,scale=?)
gradMag=np.sqrt(dfdx**2+dfdy**2)
The scale parameter is barely documented, but looking into the source, it is used to multiply derivative kernels, i.e. the (-1,0,1) for finite differences. Using the 3x3 Sobel kernel, I assumed the scale should then be 1/2*dx or 1/2*dy (finite differences scehme) to obtain derivatives in true scale, but that does not seem to be the case: I was testing this on a synthetic image of hemisphere with different raster but not getting consistent results.
How is scale supposed to be used to incorporate raster dimensions, thus getting real derivative estimates?
Scale must be equal 0.25, from here: OpenCV's Sobel filter - why does it look so bad, especially compared to Gimp?
The normalization divisor for kernels can be calculated by the following fomula:
enter code heref = max(abs(sumNegative), abs(sumPositive))
where sumNegative is the sum of negative values in the kernel and sumPositive the sum of positive values in the kernel.

Similarity metric for 3D histograms

I want to cluster images based on colour similarity. For that I need a good similarity metric between two 3D histograms. A 3D histogram of an image is just a 3 dimensional space where each axis represents one of the base colours. The range of each axis is 0-255 since this are the possible values of the base colours for each pixel.
The histogram is represented as a 256X256X256 matrix and each entry in the matrix represents the count of pixels with that specific colour in the image. For example:
If the value of the matrix element M[0][0][0] = 1150 it means that there are 1150 black pixels in the image (RGB(0,0,0) represents the colour black)
I am looking for the most sensible similarity metric for this kind of problem. The metric will be used in the clustering algorithm (DBSCAN probably) to evaluate image similarity.
Use the L*a*b* (CIELAB) color space, where euclidean distance is indeed similarity, as it is designed to model human eye perceptions non-linearities.

Are Wavelet Coefficients simply the pixel values of decomposed image in 2D Discrete Wavelet Transform

I've been working with Discrete Wavelet Transform, I'm new to this theory. I want to access and modify the wavelet coefficients of the decomposed image, Are those wavelet coefficients simply the pixel values of the decomposed image in 2D DWT?
This is for example the result of DWT Decomposition:
So, when I want to access and modify the Wavelet Coefficients, can I just iterate through the pixel values of above image? Thank you for your help.
No. The image is merely illustrative.
The image you are looking on does not exactly correspond to original coefficients. The original wavelet coefficients are real numbers. Unlike them, you are looking on their absolute values quantized into a range from 0 to 255.
It is not true that the coefficients were calculated as pairwise sums and differences of the input samples. The coefficients were calculated using two complementary filters. See the description here. However, it is essential that these coefficients were adjusted and it is no longer possible to synthesize the original image. If you need to synthesize the image, you cannot access the pixels of the referenced image.

How to apply box filter on integral image? (SURF)

Assuming that I have a grayscale (8-bit) image and assume that I have an integral image created from that same image.
Image resolution is 720x576. According to SURF algorithm, each octave is composed of 4 box filters, which are defined by the number of pixels on their side. The
first octave uses filters with 9x9, 15x15, 21x21 and 27x27 pixels. The
second octave uses filters with 15x15, 27x27, 39x39 and 51x51 pixels.The third octave uses filters with 27x27, 51x51, 75x75 and 99x99 pixels. If the image is sufficiently large and I guess 720x576 is big enough (right??!!), a fourth octave is added, 51x51, 99x99, 147x147 and 195x195. These
octaves partially overlap one another to improve the quality of the interpolated results.
// so, we have:
//
// 9x9 15x15 21x21 27x27
// 15x15 27x27 39x39 51x51
// 27x27 51x51 75x75 99x99
// 51x51 99x99 147x147 195x195
The questions are:What are the values in each of these filters? Should I hardcode these values, or should I calculate them? How exactly (numerically) to apply filters to the integral image?
Also, for calculating the Hessian determinant I found two approximations:
det(HessianApprox) = DxxDyy − (0.9Dxy)^2 anddet(HessianApprox) = DxxDyy − (0.81Dxy)^2Which one is correct?
(Dxx, Dyy, and Dxy are Gaussian second order derivatives).
I had to go back to the original paper to find the precise answers to your questions.
Some background first
SURF leverages a common Image Analysis approach for regions-of-interest detection that is called blob detection.
The typical approach for blob detection is a difference of Gaussians.
There are several reasons for this, the first one being to mimic what happens in the visual cortex of the human brains.
The drawback to difference of Gaussians (DoG) is the computation time that is too expensive to be applied to large image areas.
In order to bypass this issue, SURF takes a simple approach. A DoG is simply the computation of two Gaussian averages (or equivalently, apply a Gaussian blur) followed by taking their difference.
A quick-and-dirty approximation (not so dirty for small regions) is to approximate the Gaussian blur by a box blur.
A box blur is the average value of all the images values in a given rectangle. It can be computed efficiently via integral images.
Using integral images
Inside an integral image, each pixel value is the sum of all the pixels that were above it and on its left in the original image.
The top-left pixel value in the integral image is thus 0, and the bottom-rightmost pixel of the integral image has thus the sum of all the original pixels for value.
Then, you just need to remark that the box blur is equal to the sum of all the pixels inside a given rectangle (not originating in the top-lefmost pixel of the image) and apply the following simple geometric reasoning.
If you have a rectangle with corners ABCD (top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right), then the value of the box filter is given by:
boxFilter(ABCD) = A + D - B - C,
where A, B, C, D is a shortcut for IntegralImagePixelAt(A) (B, C, D respectively).
Integral images in SURF
SURF is not using box blurs of sizes 9x9, etc. directly.
What it uses instead is several orders of Gaussian derivatives, or Haar-like features.
Let's take an example. Suppose you are to compute the 9x9 filters output. This corresponds to a given sigma, hence a fixed scale/octave.
The sigma being fixed, you center your 9x9 window on the pixel of interest. Then, you compute the output of the 2nd order Gaussian derivative in each direction (horizontal, vertical, diagonal). The Fig. 1 in the paper gives you an illustration of the vertical and diagonal filters.
The Hessian determinant
There is a factor to take into account the scale differences. Let's believe the paper that the determinant is equal to:
Det = DxxDyy - (0.9 * Dxy)^2.
Finally, the determinant is given by: Det = DxxDyy - 0.81*Dxy^2.
Look at page 17 of this document
http://www.sci.utah.edu/~fletcher/CS7960/slides/Scott.pdf
If you made a code for normal Gaussian 2D convolution, just use the box filter as a Gaussian kernel and the input image will be the same original image not integral image. The results from this method will be same with the one you asked.

gaussian blur with FFT

im trying to implement a gaussian blur with the use of FFT and could find here the following recipe.
This means that you can take the
Fourier transform of the image and the
filter, multiply the (complex)
results, and then take the inverse
Fourier transform.
I've got a kernel K, a 7x7 Matrix
and a Image I, a 512x512 Matrix.
I do not understand how to multiply K by I.
Is the only way to do that by making K as big as I (512x512) ?
Yes, you do need to make K as big as I by padding it with zeros. Also, after padding, but before you take the FFT of the kernel, you need to translate it with wraparound, such that the center of the kernel (the peak of the Gaussian) is at (0,0). Otherwise, your filtered image will be translated. Alternatively, you can translate the resulting filtered image once you are done.
Another point: for small kernels not using the FFT may actually be faster. A 2D Gaussian kernel is separable, meaning that you can separate it into two 1D kernels for x and y. Then instead of a 2D convolution, you can do two 1D convolutions in x and y directions in the spatial domain. For smaller kernels that may end up being faster than doing the convolution in the frequency domain using the FFT.
If you are comfortable with pixel shader and if FFT is not your main goal here, but convolution with gaussian blur kernel IS,- then i can recommend my tutorial on what convolution is
regards.

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