Is there any chance to detect object using only morphology operations? - opencv

As in question. Is there any chance to "create" algorithm using only funtions: morphologyEx, threshold, bitwise_xor, bitwise_or, bitwise_and, bitwise_not with different parameters to detect objects (shapes) in image?
I wrote MEP program to find algorithm and i use only this function in function set. Sometimes i can find "not ideal" solution, but it is not, but it only work on trained image
EDIT:
Example:
Input image:
Reference image (what I want to achieve):
My result (it isnt great but close):
But it should find solution for different shape not exactly car.
Is any chance that it can find algorithm that find the same shape in other (not trained) picture. I checked that when i increase size or rotate car found algorithm also work, but it doesnt work on other picture of similar car.
Which operation (using opencv library) can i add to function set to achieve success?

Related

How can I transform an image to match a circular model in OpenCV

I'm trying to make a program that can take an image of a dartboard and read the score. So far I can get the position of each dart by comparing it to a model image as you can see here:
However this only works if the input image is practically the same. In this other case the board is slightly in a different perspective so I was thinking maybe I can transform the image to match the model image and then do the process that you can see above.
So my question is: How can I transform this last image to match the shape and pespective of the model dart board with OpenCV?
The dart board is basically planar. Thus, you can model the wanted transformation by a homography. Now you can perform a simple feature extraction and matching like here or if speed is not as important utilize an intensity based parametric alignment algorithm (more accurate).
However, as already mentioned in the comments, it will not be as simple afterwards. The dart flights will (depending on the distortion) most likely cover an area of your board which does not coincide with the actual score. Actually, even with a frontal view it is difficult to say.
I assume you will have to find the point on which the darts stick in your board. Furthermore, I think this will be easier with a view from a certain angle. Maybe, you can fit lines segments just in the area where you detected a difference beforehand.
I don't think comparing an image with the model that was captured using a different subject with a different angle is a good idea. There should be lots of small differences even after perfectly matching them geometrically - like shades, lighting, color differences, etc.
I would just capture an image every time the game begin (reference) and extract the features (straight lines seem good enough) and then after the game, capture an image, subtract the reference, and do blob analysis to find darts.

Object recognition methods in OpenCV

I am using some functions such as color contour tracking and image matching which are already available in OpenCV .. I am trying to identify a pink duck, more specifically the head of the duck, but these two functions don't give me the outcome I am expecting for some reasons such as :
the color thing don't always work perfect because the change in the lightning , which accordingly would change the color seen by the camera.
when I use the image matching thing, I use one image of the duck which I took from a specific position and it can identify the duck only when he is in that position, but I want to identify it even when I rotate the duck or play around with it.
Does anyone have an ideas about a better way to track a certain object ?
Thank you
Have you tried converting the image into the hsv colourspace? This colourspace tries to remove the effects of lighting so might be able to improve your colour-based segmentation.
To identify the head of the duck, once you have identified the duck as a whole you could perhaps identify the orientation (using template matching with a set of templates from different viewpoints, or haar cascades, or ...) and then use the known orientation and an empirical rule to determine where the head is located. For example, if you detect the duck in an upright position within a certain bounding box, the head is assumed to be located in the top third of that bounding box.
I think it might just take little more than what OpenCV provides straight forward way.
Given your specific question, you might just want to try shape descriptors of some sort.
Basically, try to take Duck's head's pictures shape from various angles and capture the shapes from it.
Now, you can find a likelihood model (forgive me for not a very accurate term) that can validate the hypothesis that a given captured shape indeed belongs to the class of Duck's head or not. Color can just be an additional feature that might help.
If you are a new person in this field - try catch hold of Duda and Hart: Pattern Classification. This doesn't have solution to find-the-duck-problem but will shape your thinking.

opecv template matching -> get exact location?

I have opencv installed and working on my iphone (big thanks to this community). I'm doing template matching with it. It does find the object in the captured image. However, the exact location seems to be hard to tell.
Please take a look at the following video (18 seconds):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQnXNZMqpsU
As you can see in the video, it does find the template in the image. But when i move the camera a bit further away, then the found template is positioned somewhere inside that square. That way it's hard to tell the exact location of the found object.
The square that you see is basically the found x,y location of the template plus the width,height of the actual template image.
So basically my question is, is there a way to find the exact location of the found template image? Because currently it can be at any locastion inside that square. No real way to tell the exact location...?
It seems that you're not well-pleased with your template matching algorithm :)
Shortly, there are some ways to improve it, but I would recommend you to try something else. If your images are always as simple as in the video, you can use thresholding, contour finding, blob detection, etc. They are simple and fast.
For a more demanding environment, you may try feature matching. Look for SIFT, SURF, ORB, or other ways to describe your objects with features. Actually, ORB was specifically designed to be fast enough for the limited power of mobile phones.
Try this sample in the OCV samples/cpp/ folder
matching_to_many_images.cpp
And check this detailed answer on how to use feature detectors;
Detecting if an object from one image is in another image with OpenCV
Template matching (cvMatchTemplate()) is not invariant to scale and rotation. When you move the phone back, the image appears smaller, and the template "match" is just the place with the best match score, though it is not really a true match.
If you want scale and/or rotation invariance you will have to try non-template matching methods such as those using 2D-feature descriptors.
Check out the OpenCV samples for examples of how to do this.

OpenCV shape matching

I'm new to OpenCV (am actually using Emgu CV C# wrapper) and am attempting to do some object detection.
I'm attempting to determine if an object matches a predefined set of objects (that I will have to define). The background is well lit and does not move. My objects that I am starting with are bottles and cans.
My current approach is:
Do absDiff with a previously taken background image to separate the background.
Then dilate 4x to make the lighter areas (in labels) shrink.
Then I do a binary threshold to get a big blog, followed by finding contours in this image.
I then take the largest contour and draw it, which becomes my shape to either save to the accepted set or compare with the accepted set.
Currently I'm using cvMatchShapes, but the double return value seems to vary widely. I'm guessing it is because it doesn't take into account rotation.
Is this approach a good one? It isn't working well for glass bottles since the edges are hard to find...
I've read about haar classifiers, but thinking that might be overkill for my task.
Maybe this link is useful too. You have the code and library for SIFT, you just need to compile it. Good luck.
http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/hess/sift-library-places-2nd-in-acm-mm-10-ossc/#more-176

What is the best method for object detection in low-resolution moving video?

I'm looking for the fastest and more efficient method of detecting an object in a moving video. Things to note about this video: It is very grainy and low resolution, also both the background and foreground are moving simultaneously.
Note: I'm trying to detect a moving truck on a road in a moving video.
Methods I've tried:
Training a Haar Cascade - I've attempted training the classifiers to identify the object by taking copping multiple images of the desired object. This proved to produce either many false detects or no detects at all (the object desired was never detected). I used about 100 positive images and 4000 negatives.
SIFT and SURF Keypoints - When attempting to use either of these methods which is based on features, I discovered that the object I wanted to detect was too low in resolution, so there were not enough features to match to make an accurate detection. (Object desired was never detected)
Template Matching - This is probably the best method I've tried. It's the most accurate although the most hacky of them all. I can detect the object for one specific video using a template cropped from the video. However, there is no guaranteed accuracy because all that is known is the best match for each frame, no analysis is done on the percentage template matches the frame. Basically, it only works if the object is always in the video, otherwise it will create a false detect.
So those are the big 3 methods I've tried and all have failed. What would work best is something like template matching but with scale and rotation invariance (which led me to try SIFT/SURF), but i have no idea how to modify the template matching function.
Does anyone have any suggestions how to best accomplish this task?
Apply optical flow to the image and then segment it based on flow field. Background flow is very different from "object" flow (which mainly diverges or converges depending on whether it is moving towards or away from you, with some lateral component also).
Here's an oldish project which worked this way:
http://users.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/~steve/asset/index.html
This vehicle detection paper uses a Gabor filter bank for low level detection and then uses the response to create the features space where it trains an SVM classifier.
The technique seems to work well and is at least scale invariant. I am not sure about rotation though.
Not knowing your application, my initial impression is normalized cross-correlation, especially since I remember seeing a purely optical cross-correlator that had vehicle-tracking as the example application. (Tracking a vehicle as it passes using only optical components and an image of the side of the vehicle - I wish I could find the link.) This is similar (if not identical) to "template matching", which you say kind of works, but this won't work if the images are rotated, as you know.
However, there's a related method based on log-polar coordinates that will work regardless of rotation, scale, shear, and translation.
I imagine this would also enable tracking that the object has left the scene of the video, too, since the maximum correlation will decrease.
How low resolution are we talking? Could you also elaborate on the object? Is it a specific color? Does it have a pattern? The answers affect what you should be using.
Also, I might be reading your template matching statement wrong, but it sounds like you are overtraining it (by testing on the same video you extracted the object from??).
A Haar Cascade is going to require significant training data on your part, and will be poor for any adjustments in orientation.
Your best bet might be to combine template matching with an algorithm similar to camshift in opencv (5,7MB PDF), along with a probabilistic model (you'll have to figure this one out) of whether the truck is still in the image.

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