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OpenCV Computer Vision Application Programming Cookbook Second Edition
OpenCV Computer Vision Application Programming Cookbook Second Edition
OpenCV Computer Vision Application Programming Cookbook Second Edition
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OpenCV Computer Vision Application Programming Cookbook Second Edition

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OpenCV 3 Computer Vision Application Programming Cookbook is appropriate for novice C++ programmers who want to learn how to use the OpenCV library to build computer vision applications. It is also suitable for professional software developers wishing to be introduced to the concepts of computer vision programming. It can also be used as a companion book in a university-level computer vision courses. It constitutes an excellent reference for graduate students and researchers in image processing and computer vision.
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Release dateAug 26, 2014
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    OpenCV Computer Vision Application Programming Cookbook Second Edition - Robert Laganière

    Table of Contents

    OpenCV Computer Vision Application Programming Cookbook Second Edition

    Credits

    About the Author

    About the Reviewers

    www.PacktPub.com

    Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more

    Why Subscribe?

    Free Access for Packt account holders

    Preface

    What this book covers

    What you need for this book

    Who this book is for

    Conventions

    Reader feedback

    Customer support

    Downloading the example code

    Errata

    Piracy

    Questions

    1. Playing with Images

    Introduction

    Installing the OpenCV library

    Getting ready

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Using Qt for OpenCV developments

    The OpenCV developer site

    See also

    Loading, displaying, and saving images

    Getting ready

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Clicking on images

    Drawing on images

    Running the example with Qt

    See also

    Exploring the cv::Mat data structure

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    The input and output arrays

    The old IplImage structure

    See also

    Defining regions of interest

    Getting ready

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Using image masks

    See also

    2. Manipulating Pixels

    Introduction

    Accessing pixel values

    Getting ready

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    The cv::Mat_ template class

    See also

    Scanning an image with pointers

    Getting ready

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Other color reduction formulas

    Having input and output arguments

    Efficient scanning of continuous images

    Low-level pointer arithmetics

    See also

    Scanning an image with iterators

    Getting ready

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    See also

    Writing efficient image-scanning loops

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more…

    See also

    Scanning an image with neighbor access

    Getting ready

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    See also

    Performing simple image arithmetic

    Getting ready

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Overloaded image operators

    Splitting the image channels

    Remapping an image

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    See also

    3. Processing Color Images with Classes

    Introduction

    Using the Strategy pattern in an algorithm design

    Getting ready

    How to do it…

    How it works…

    There's more…

    Computing the distance between two color vectors

    Using OpenCV functions

    The functor or function object

    See also

    Using a Controller design pattern to communicate with processing modules

    Getting ready

    How to do it…

    How it works…

    There's more…

    The Model-View-Controller architecture

    Converting color representations

    Getting ready

    How to do it…

    How it works…

    See also

    Representing colors with hue, saturation, and brightness

    How to do it…

    How it works…

    There's more…

    Using colors for detection – skin tone detection

    4. Counting the Pixels with Histograms

    Introduction

    Computing the image histogram

    Getting started

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Computing histograms of color images

    See also

    Applying look-up tables to modify the image appearance

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Stretching a histogram to improve the image contrast

    Applying a look-up table on color images

    See also

    Equalizing the image histogram

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    Backprojecting a histogram to detect specific image content

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Backprojecting color histograms

    See also

    Using the mean shift algorithm to find an object

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    See also

    Retrieving similar images using the histogram comparison

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    See also

    Counting pixels with integral images

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Adaptive thresholding

    Visual tracking using histograms

    See also

    5. Transforming Images with Morphological Operations

    Introduction

    Eroding and dilating images using morphological filters

    Getting ready

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    See also

    Opening and closing images using morphological filters

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    See also

    Detecting edges and corners using morphological filters

    Getting ready

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    See also

    Segmenting images using watersheds

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    See also

    Extracting distinctive regions using MSER

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    See also

    Extracting foreground objects with the GrabCut algorithm

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    See also

    6. Filtering the Images

    Introduction

    Filtering images using low-pass filters

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Downsampling an image

    Interpolating pixel values

    See also

    Filtering images using a median filter

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    Applying directional filters to detect edges

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Gradient operators

    Gaussian derivatives

    See also

    Computing the Laplacian of an image

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Enhancing the contrast of an image using the Laplacian

    Difference of Gaussians

    See also

    7. Extracting Lines, Contours, and Components

    Introduction

    Detecting image contours with the Canny operator

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    See also

    Detecting lines in images with the Hough transform

    Getting ready

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Detecting circles

    See also

    Fitting a line to a set of points

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Extracting the components' contours

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Computing components' shape descriptors

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Quadrilateral detection

    8. Detecting Interest Points

    Introduction

    Detecting corners in an image

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Good features to track

    The feature detector's common interface

    See also

    Detecting features quickly

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Adapted feature detection

    Grid adapted feature detection

    Pyramid adapted feature detection

    See also

    Detecting scale-invariant features

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    The SIFT feature-detection algorithm

    See also

    Detecting FAST features at multiple scales

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    The ORB feature-detection algorithm

    See also

    9. Describing and Matching Interest Points

    Introduction

    Matching local templates

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Template matching

    See also

    Describing local intensity patterns

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Cross-checking matches

    The ratio test

    Distance thresholding

    See also

    Describing keypoints with binary features

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    FREAK

    See also

    10. Estimating Projective Relations in Images

    Introduction

    Image formation

    Calibrating a camera

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Calibration with known intrinsic parameters

    Using a grid of circles for calibration

    See also

    Computing the fundamental matrix of an image pair

    Getting ready

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    See also

    Matching images using a random sample consensus

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Refining the fundamental matrix

    Refining the matches

    Computing a homography between two images

    Getting ready

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Detecting planar targets in an image

    See also

    11. Processing Video Sequences

    Introduction

    Reading video sequences

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    See also

    Processing the video frames

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    Processing a sequence of images

    Using a frame processor class

    See also

    Writing video sequences

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    The codec four-character code

    See also

    Tracking feature points in a video

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    See also

    Extracting the foreground objects in a video

    How to do it...

    How it works...

    There's more...

    The Mixture of Gaussian method

    See also

    Index

    OpenCV Computer Vision Application Programming Cookbook Second Edition


    OpenCV Computer Vision Application Programming Cookbook Second Edition

    Copyright © 2014 Packt Publishing

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    Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

    Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

    First published: May 2011

    Second edition: August 2014

    Production reference: 1200814

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    Credits

    Author

    Robert Laganière

    Reviewers

    Walter Lucetti

    Anton Sukhinov

    Tao Wu

    Commissioning Editor

    Usha Iyer

    Acquisition Editors

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    Cover Work

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    About the Author

    Robert Laganière is a professor at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is also a faculty member of the VIVA research lab and is the co-author of several scientific publications and patents in content-based video analysis, visual surveillance, object recognition, and 3D reconstruction.

    Robert authored OpenCV2 Computer Vision Application Programming Cookbook, Packt Publishing, in 2011 and co-authored Object Oriented Software Development, McGraw Hill, in 2001. He co-founded Visual Cortek in 2006, an Ottawa-based video analytics startup that was later acquired by iWatchLife (www.iwatchlife.com) in 2009, where he also assumes the role of Chief Scientist. Since 2011, he is also Chief Scientist at Cognivue Corp, which is a leader in embedded vision solutions. He has a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree from Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal (1987) and MSc and PhD degrees from INRS-Telecommunications, Montreal (1996). You can visit his website at www.laganiere.name.

    I wish to thank all my students at the VIVA lab; I learn so much from them.

    About the Reviewers

    Walter Lucetti, known on the Internet as Myzhar, is an Italian computer engineer with a specialization in Robotics and Robotics Perception. He received a Laurea degree in 2005 while studying at Research Center E.Piaggio in Pisa (Italy). He wrote a thesis on the 3D mapping of the real world using a 2D Laser tilted using a servo motor, fusing 3D with RGB data. During the writing of his thesis, he got introduced to OpenCV for the first time. It was early 2004 and OpenCV was at its larval stage.

    After the Laurea, he started working as a software developer for low-level embedded systems and high-level desktop systems. He deeply improved his knowledge about Computer Vision and Machine Learning as a researcher at Gustavo Stefanini Advanced Robotics Research Center in La Spezia (Italy), which is a spinoff of PERCRO Laboratory of the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa (Italy).

    Now, he is working in the industry, developing firmware for embedded ARM systems and intelligent algorithms for video surveillance systems.

    He is also working on a personal project: MyzharBot. MyzharBot is a tracked ground mobile robot that uses stereo vision to detect obstacles and analyze and explore the environment.

    You can find more information about Walter, his project, and a lot of tutorials on computer vision at www.robot-home.it and http://myzharbot.robot-home.it.

    Anton Sukhinov graduated from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He has a PhD degree in Physics and Mathematics.

    Anton has experience in mathematical modeling, numerical simulation, image processing and analysis, machine learning, and electronics.

    During the reviewing of this book, Anton was a senior developer in CVisionLab, which is a small Russian R&D firm dedicated to image processing, analysis, machine learning, and related fields.

    Currently, he works as a research scientist at Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Russia).

    Tao Wu graduated from University of Maryland with a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering in 2013. He received his MS and BE degrees in Electrical Engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, in 2008 and 2005, respectively.

    He has more than 7 years of experience in C/C++ and OpenCV. His research interests include computer vision, pattern recognition, machine learning, and image and video processing.

    Currently, he is working for Microsoft.

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    Preface

    OpenCV (Open source Computer Vision) is an open source library that contains more than 500 optimized algorithms for image and video analysis. Since its introduction in 1999, it has been largely adopted as the primary development tool by the community of researchers and developers in computer vision. OpenCV was originally developed at Intel by a team led by Gary Bradski as an initiative to advance research in vision and promote the development of rich vision-based, CPU-intensive applications. After a series of beta releases, Version 1.0 was launched in 2006. A second major release occurred in 2009 with the launch of OpenCV 2 that proposed important changes, especially the new C++ interface that we use in this book. In 2012, OpenCV reshaped itself as a nonprofit foundation (http://opencv.org/) that relies on crowdfunding for its future development.

    This book is a new edition of OpenCV Computer Vision Application Programming Cookbook. All the programming recipes of the previous editions have been reviewed and updated. We also have added new content to provide readers with even better coverage of the essential functionalities of the library. This book covers many of the library's features and shows you how to use them to accomplish specific tasks. Our objective is not to provide detailed coverage of every option offered by the OpenCV functions and classes, but rather to give you the elements you need to build your applications from the ground up. In this book, we also explore fundamental concepts in image analysis, and we describe some of the important algorithms in computer vision.

    This book is an opportunity for you to get introduced to the world of image and video analysis. However, this is just the beginning. The good news is that OpenCV continues to evolve and expand. Just consult the OpenCV online documentation at http://opencv.org/ to stay updated on what the library can do for you. You can also visit the author's website at www.laganiere.name for updated information about this Cookbook.

    What this book covers

    Chapter 1, Playing with Images, introduces the OpenCV library and shows you how to build simple applications that can read and display images. It also introduces the basic OpenCV data structures.

    Chapter 2, Manipulating Pixels, explains how an image can be read. It describes different methods for scanning an image in order to perform an operation on each of its pixels.

    Chapter 3, Processing Color Images with Classes, consists of recipes that present various object-oriented design patterns that can help you build better computer vision applications. It also discusses the concept of colors in images.

    Chapter 4, Counting the Pixels with Histograms, shows you how to compute image histograms and how they can be used to modify an image. Different applications based on histograms are presented, and they achieve image segmentation, object detection, and image retrieval.

    Chapter 5, Transforming Images with Morphological Operations, explores the concept of mathematical morphology. It presents different operators and informs you how they can be used to detect edges, corners, and segments in images.

    Chapter 6, Filtering the Images, teaches you the principle of frequency analysis and image filtering. It shows how low-pass and high-pass filters can be applied to images and presents the concept of derivative operators.

    Chapter 7, Extracting Lines, Contours, and Components, focuses on the detection of geometric image features. It explains how to extract contours, lines, and connected components in an image.

    Chapter 8, Detecting Interest Points, describes various feature-point detectors in images.

    Chapter 9, Describing and Matching Interest Points, explains how descriptors of interest points can be computed and used to match points between images.

    Chapter 10, Estimating Projective Relations in Images, explores the projective relations that exist between two images of the same scene. It also describes the process of camera calibration and revisits the problem of matching feature points.

    Chapter 11, Processing Video Sequences, provides you with a framework to read and write a video sequence and process its frames. It also shows you how it is possible to track feature points from frame to frame and how to extract the foreground objects moving in front of a camera.

    What you need for this book

    This Cookbook is based on the C++ API of the OpenCV library. Therefore, it is assumed that you have some experience with the C++ language. In order to run the examples presented in the recipes and experiment with them, you need a good C++ development environment. Microsoft Visual Studio and Qt are two popular choices.

    Who this book is for

    This Cookbook is appropriate for novice C++ programmers who want to learn how to use the OpenCV library to build computer vision applications. It is also suitable for professional software developers who wish to be introduced to the concepts of computer vision programming. It can be used as a companion book for university-level computer vision courses. It is an excellent reference for graduate students and researchers of image processing and computer vision.

    Conventions

    In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

    Code words in text, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, and user input are shown as follows: Very conveniently, this check is encapsulated inside the create method of cv::Mat.

    A block of code is set as follows:

      // use image with a Mat_ template

      cv::Mat_ im2(image);

      im2(50,100)= 0; // access to row 50 and column 100

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    Chapter 1. Playing with Images

    In this chapter, we will get you started with the OpenCV library. You will learn how to perform the following tasks:

    Installing the OpenCV library

    Loading, displaying, and saving images

    Exploring the cv::Mat data structure

    Defining regions of interest

    Introduction

    This chapter will teach you the basic elements of OpenCV and will show you how to accomplish the most fundamental image processing tasks: reading, displaying, and saving images. However, before you can start with OpenCV, you need to install the library. This is a simple process that is explained in the first recipe of this chapter.

    All your computer vision applications will involve the processing of images. This is why the most fundamental tool that OpenCV offers you is a data structure to handle images and matrices. It is a powerful data structure, with many useful attributes and methods. It also incorporates an advanced memory management model that greatly facilitates the development of applications. The last two recipes of this chapter will teach you how to use this important data structure of OpenCV.

    Installing the OpenCV library

    OpenCV is an open source library for developing computer vision applications that run on Windows, Linux, Android, and Mac OS. It can be used in both academic and commercial applications under a BSD license that allows you to freely use, distribute, and adapt it. This recipe will show you how to install the library on your machine.

    Getting ready

    When you visit the OpenCV official website at http://opencv.org/, you will find the latest release of the library, the online documentation, and many other useful resources on OpenCV.

    How to do it...

    From the OpenCV website, go to the DOWNLOADS page that corresponds to the platform of your choice (Unix/Windows or Android). From there, you will be able to download the OpenCV package. You will then need to uncompress it, normally under a directory with a name that corresponds to the library version (for example, in Windows, you can save the uncompressed directory under C:\OpenCV2.4.9). Once this is done, you will find a collection of files and directories that constitute the library at the chosen location. Notably, you will find the sources directory here, which contains all the source files. (Yes, it is open source!) However, in order to complete the installation of the library and have it ready for use, you need to undertake an additional step: generating the binary files of the library for the environment of your choice. This is indeed the point where you have to make a decision on the target platform that you will use to create your OpenCV applications. Which operating system should you use? Windows or Linux? Which compiler should you use? Microsoft VS2013 or MinGW? 32-bit or 64-bit? The Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that you will use in your project development will also guide you to make these choices.

    Note that if you are working under Windows with Visual Studio, the executable installation package will, most probably, not only install the library sources, but also install all of the precompiled binaries needed to build your applications. Check for the build directory; it should contain the x64 and x86 subdirectories (corresponding to the 64-bit and 32-bit versions). Within these subdirectories, you should find directories such as vc10, vc11, and vc12; these contain the binaries for the different versions of MS Visual Studio. In that case, you are ready to start using OpenCV. Therefore, you can skip the compilation step described in this recipe, unless you want a customized build with specific options.

    To complete the installation process and build the OpenCV binaries, you need to use the CMake tool, available at http://cmake.org. CMake is another open source software tool designed to control the compilation process of a software system using platform-independent configuration files. It generates the required makefiles or workspaces needed for compiling a software library in your environment. Therefore, you need to download and install CMake. You can then run it using the command line, but it is easier to use CMake with its GUI (cmake-gui). In the latter case, all you need to do is specify the folder containing the OpenCV library source and the one that will contain the binaries. You need to click on Configure in order to select the compiler of your choice and then click on Configure again.

    You are now ready to generate your project files by clicking on the Generate button. These files will allow you to compile the library. This is the last step of the installation process, which will make the library ready to be used under your development environment. For example, if you have selected Visual Studio, then all you need to do is to open the top-level solution file that CMake has created for you (most probably, the OpenCV.sln file). You then issue the Build Solution command in Visual Studio. To get both a Release and a Debug build, you will have to repeat the compilation process twice, one for each configuration. The bin directory that is created contains the dynamic library files that your executable will call at runtime. Make sure to set your system PATH environment variable from the control panel such that your operating system can find the dll files when you run your applications.

    In Linux environments, you will use the generated makefiles by running your make utility command. To complete the installation of all the directories, you also have to run a Build INSTALL or sudo make INSTALL command.

    However, before you build the libraries, make sure to check what the OpenCV installer has installed for you; the built library that you are looking for might already be there, which will save you the compilation step. If you wish to use Qt as your IDE, the There's more... section of this recipe describes an alternative way to compile the OpenCV project.

    How it works...

    Since Version 2.2, the OpenCV library is divided into several modules. These modules are built-in library files located in the lib directory. Some of the commonly-used modules are as follows:

    The opencv_core module that contains the core functionalities of the library, in particular, basic data structures and arithmetic functions

    The opencv_imgproc module that contains the main image processing functions

    The opencv_highgui module that contains the image and video reading and writing functions along with some user interface functions

    The opencv_features2d module that contains the feature point detectors and descriptors and the feature point matching framework

    The opencv_calib3d module that contains the camera calibration, two-view geometry estimation, and stereo functions

    The opencv_video module that contains the motion estimation, feature tracking, and foreground extraction functions and classes

    The opencv_objdetect module that contains the object detection functions such as the face and people detectors

    The library also includes other utility modules that contain machine learning functions (opencv_ml), computational geometry algorithms (opencv_flann), contributed code (opencv_contrib), obsolete code (opencv_legacy), and gpu-accelerated code (opencv_gpu). You will also find other specialized libraries that implement higher-level functions, such as opencv_photo for computational photography and opencv_stitching for image-stitching algorithms. There is also a library module, called opencv_nonfree, which contains functions that have a potential limitation in use. When you compile your application, you will have to link your program with the libraries that contain the OpenCV functions you are using. Most likely, these will be the first three functions of the list given previously plus some of the others depending on the scope of your application.

    All these modules have a header file associated with them (located in the include directory). A typical OpenCV C++ code will, therefore, start by including the required

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