Distinguish rock scences using opencv - opencv

Question

I am struggling with finding the appropriate contour algorithm for a low quality image. The example image shows a rock scene:
What I am trying to achieve is to find contours arround features such as:
light areas
dark areas
grey1 areas
grey2 areas
etc. until grey-n areas
(The number of areas shall be a parameter of choice)
I do not want to take a simple binary-threshold but rather use some sort of contour-finding (for example watershed or other). The major feature-lines shall be kept, noise within a feature-are can be flattened.
The result of my code can be seen on the images to the right.
Unfortunately, as you can easily tell, the colors do not really represent the original large-scale image features! For example: check out the two areas that I circled with red - these features are almost completely flooded with another color. What I imagine is that at least the very light and the very dark areas are covered by its own color.
cv::Mat cv_src = cv::imread(argv[1]);
cv::Mat output;
cv::Mat cv_src_gray;
cv::cvtColor(cv_src, cv_src_gray, cv::COLOR_RGB2GRAY);
double clipLimit = 0.1;
cv::Size titleGridSize = cv::Size(8,8);
cv::Ptr<cv::CLAHE> clahe = cv::createCLAHE(clipLimit, titleGridSize);
clahe->apply(cv_src_gray, output);
cv::equalizeHist(output, output);
cv::cvtColor(output, cv_src, cv::COLOR_GRAY2RGB);
// Create binary image from source image
cv::Mat bw;
cv::cvtColor(cv_src, bw, cv::COLOR_BGR2GRAY);
cv::threshold(bw, bw, 180, 255, cv::THRESH_BINARY);
// Perform the distance transform algorithm
cv::Mat dist;
cv::distanceTransform(bw, dist, cv::DIST_L2, CV_32F);
// Normalize the distance image for range = {0.0, 1.0}
cv::normalize(dist, dist, 0, 1., cv::NORM_MINMAX);
// Threshold to obtain the peaks
cv::threshold(dist, dist, .2, 1., cv::THRESH_BINARY);
// Create the CV_8U version of the distance image
cv::Mat dist_8u;
dist.convertTo(dist_8u, CV_8U);
// Find total markers
std::vector<std::vector<cv::Point> > contours;
cv::findContours(dist_8u, contours, cv::RETR_EXTERNAL, cv::CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE);
int ncomp = contours.size();
// Create the marker image for the watershed algorithm
cv::Mat markers = cv::Mat::zeros(dist.size(), CV_32S);
// Draw the foreground markers
for (int i = 0; i < ncomp; i++)
cv::drawContours(markers, contours, i, cv::Scalar::all(i+1), -1);
// Draw the background marker
cv::circle(markers, cv::Point(5,5), 3, CV_RGB(255,255,255), -1);
// Perform the watershed algorithm
cv::watershed(cv_src, markers);
// Generate random colors
std::vector<cv::Vec3b> colors;
for (int i = 0; i < ncomp; i++)
{
int b = cv::theRNG().uniform(0, 255);
int g = cv::theRNG().uniform(0, 255);
int r = cv::theRNG().uniform(0, 255);
colors.push_back(cv::Vec3b((uchar)b, (uchar)g, (uchar)r));
}
// Create the result image
cv::Mat dst = cv::Mat::zeros(markers.size(), CV_8UC3);
// Fill labeled objects with random colors
for (int i = 0; i < markers.rows; i++)
{
for (int j = 0; j < markers.cols; j++)
{
int index = markers.at<int>(i,j);
if (index > 0 && index <= ncomp)
dst.at<cv::Vec3b>(i,j) = colors[index-1];
else
dst.at<cv::Vec3b>(i,j) = cv::Vec3b(0,0,0);
}
}
// Show me what you got
imshow("final_result", dst);

Answer 1

I think you can use a simple clustering such as k-means for this, then examine the cluster centers (or the mean and standard deviations of each cluster). I quickly tried it in matlab.
im = imread('tvBqt.jpg');
gr = rgb2gray(im);
x = double(gr(:));
idx = kmeans(x, 4);
cl = reshape(idx, 600, 472);
figure,
subplot(1, 2, 1), imshow(gr, []), title('original')
subplot(1, 2, 2), imshow(label2rgb(cl), []), title('clustered')
The result:

Answer 2

You could try using SLIC Superpixels. I tried it and showed some good results. You could vary the parameters to get better clustering.
SLIC Superpixels
SLIC Superpixels with OpenCV C++
SLIC Superpixels with OpenCV Python