Python Opencv Contour Tree Hierarchy

I am trying to implement the algorithm found here in python with OpenCV. I am trying to implement the part of the algorithm that remove irrelevant edge boundaries based on the numb

Solution 1:

The main confusion here is probably the fact that the hierarchy returned is a numpy array with more dimensions than necessary. On top of that, it looks like the Python FindContours function returns a tuple that is a LIST of contours, and and NDARRAY of the hierarchy...

You can get a sensible array of hierarchy information that is more in line with the C docs by just taking hierarchy[0]. It would then be an appropriate shape to zip, for example, with the contours.

Below is an example that, will draw the outermost rectangles in green and the innermost rectangles in red on this image:

Output:

Note, by the way, that the wording in the OpenCV docs is a little ambiguous, but hierarchyDataOfAContour[2] describes the children of that contour (if it is negative then that is an inner contour), and hierarchyDataOfAContour[3] describes the parents of that contour (if it is negative then that is an exterior contour).

Also note: I looked into implementing the algorithm that you referred to in the OCR paper, and I saw that FindContours was giving me a lot of repeats of near-identical contours. This would complicate the finding of "Edge Boxes" as the paper describes. This may be because the Canny thresholds were too low (note that I was playing around with them as described in the paper), but there may be some way to reduce that effect or just look at the average deviation of the four corners of all the boxes and eliminate duplicates...

import cv2
import numpy

# Load the image
img = cv2.imread("/ContourTest.PNG")

# Split out each channel
blue, green, red = cv2.split(img)

defmedianCanny(img, thresh1, thresh2):
    median = numpy.median(img)
    img = cv2.Canny(img, int(thresh1 * median), int(thresh2 * median))
    return img

# Run canny edge detection on each channel
blue_edges = medianCanny(blue, 0.2, 0.3)
green_edges = medianCanny(green, 0.2, 0.3)
red_edges = medianCanny(red, 0.2, 0.3)

# Join edges back into image
edges = blue_edges | green_edges | red_edges

# Find the contours
contours,hierarchy = cv2.findContours(edges, cv2.RETR_TREE,cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)

hierarchy = hierarchy[0] # get the actual inner list of hierarchy descriptions# For each contour, find the bounding rectangle and draw itfor component inzip(contours, hierarchy):
    currentContour = component[0]
    currentHierarchy = component[1]
    x,y,w,h = cv2.boundingRect(currentContour)
    if currentHierarchy[2] < 0:
        # these are the innermost child components
        cv2.rectangle(img,(x,y),(x+w,y+h),(0,0,255),3)
    elif currentHierarchy[3] < 0:
        # these are the outermost parent components
        cv2.rectangle(img,(x,y),(x+w,y+h),(0,255,0),3)

# Finally show the image
cv2.imshow('img',img)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()