How to visualize descriptor matching using opencv module in python

Question

I am trying to use opencv with python. I wrote a descriptor (SIFT, SURF, or ORB) matching code in C++ version of opencv 2.4. I want to convert this code to opencv with python. I found some documents about how to use opencv functions in c++ but many of the opencv function in python I could not find how to use them. Here is my python code, and my current problem is that I don't know how to use "drawMatches" of opencv c++ in python. I found cv2.DRAW_MATCHES_FLAGS_DEFAULT but I have no idea how to use it. Here is my python code of matching using ORB descriptors:

im1 = cv2.imread(r'C:\boldt.jpg')
im2 = cv2.cvtColor(im1, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
im3 = cv2.imread(r'C:\boldt_resize50.jpg')
im4 = cv2.cvtColor(im3, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)

orbDetector2 = cv2.FeatureDetector_create("ORB")
orbDescriptorExtractor2 = cv2.DescriptorExtractor_create("ORB")
orbDetector4 = cv2.FeatureDetector_create("ORB")
orbDescriptorExtractor4 = cv2.DescriptorExtractor_create("ORB")

keypoints2 = orbDetector2.detect(im2)
(keypoints2, descriptors2) = orbDescriptorExtractor2.compute(im2,keypoints2)
keypoints4 = orbDetector4.detect(im4)
(keypoints4, descriptors4) = orbDescriptorExtractor4.compute(im4,keypoints4)
matcher = cv2.DescriptorMatcher_create('BruteForce-Hamming')
raw_matches = matcher.match(descriptors2, descriptors4)
img_matches = cv2.DRAW_MATCHES_FLAGS_DEFAULT(im2, keypoints2, im4, keypoints4, raw_matches)
cv2.namedWindow("Match")
cv2.imshow( "Match", img_matches);

Error message of the line "img_matches = cv2.DRAW_MATCHES_FLAGS_DEFAULT(im2, keypoints2, im4, keypoints4, raw_matches)"

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: 'long' object is not callable

I spent much time search documentation and examples of using opencv functions with python. However, I am very frustrated because there is very little information of using opencv functions in python. It will be extremely helpful if anyone can teach me where I can find the documentation of how to use every function of the opencv module in python. I appreciate your time and help.

Aeolic

Answer 1

you can visualize the feature matching in Python as following. Note the use of scipy library.

# matching features of two images
import cv2
import sys
import scipy as sp

if len(sys.argv) < 3:
    print 'usage: %s img1 img2' % sys.argv[0]
    sys.exit(1)

img1_path = sys.argv[1]
img2_path = sys.argv[2]

img1 = cv2.imread(img1_path, cv2.CV_LOAD_IMAGE_GRAYSCALE)
img2 = cv2.imread(img2_path, cv2.CV_LOAD_IMAGE_GRAYSCALE)

detector = cv2.FeatureDetector_create("SURF")
descriptor = cv2.DescriptorExtractor_create("BRIEF")
matcher = cv2.DescriptorMatcher_create("BruteForce-Hamming")

# detect keypoints
kp1 = detector.detect(img1)
kp2 = detector.detect(img2)

print '#keypoints in image1: %d, image2: %d' % (len(kp1), len(kp2))

# descriptors
k1, d1 = descriptor.compute(img1, kp1)
k2, d2 = descriptor.compute(img2, kp2)

print '#keypoints in image1: %d, image2: %d' % (len(d1), len(d2))

# match the keypoints
matches = matcher.match(d1, d2)

# visualize the matches
print '#matches:', len(matches)
dist = [m.distance for m in matches]

print 'distance: min: %.3f' % min(dist)
print 'distance: mean: %.3f' % (sum(dist) / len(dist))
print 'distance: max: %.3f' % max(dist)

# threshold: half the mean
thres_dist = (sum(dist) / len(dist)) * 0.5

# keep only the reasonable matches
sel_matches = [m for m in matches if m.distance < thres_dist]

print '#selected matches:', len(sel_matches)

# #####################################
# visualization of the matches
h1, w1 = img1.shape[:2]
h2, w2 = img2.shape[:2]
view = sp.zeros((max(h1, h2), w1 + w2, 3), sp.uint8)
view[:h1, :w1, :] = img1  
view[:h2, w1:, :] = img2
view[:, :, 1] = view[:, :, 0]  
view[:, :, 2] = view[:, :, 0]

for m in sel_matches:
    # draw the keypoints
    # print m.queryIdx, m.trainIdx, m.distance
    color = tuple([sp.random.randint(0, 255) for _ in xrange(3)])
    cv2.line(view, (int(k1[m.queryIdx].pt[0]), int(k1[m.queryIdx].pt[1])) , (int(k2[m.trainIdx].pt[0] + w1), int(k2[m.trainIdx].pt[1])), color)


cv2.imshow("view", view)
cv2.waitKey()

Persian

When running your code I get an error on line 66, TypeError: integer argument expected, got float – Fowl

@Persian an anonymous user just edited your post, might want to check they haven't broken it – Thebaine

view[:h1, :w1, :] = img1 ValueError: could not broadcast input array from shape (322,518) into shape (322,518,3) – Homogeneity

Ok the problem is that the img is not always 3-channel as @brainless has pointed out. This depends on the OpenCV version. So in my case (I'm using 2.7.13) I had to rollback to the original version that wall-e posted – Homogeneity

Answer 2

I've also written something myself that just uses the OpenCV Python interface and I didn't use scipy. drawMatches is part of OpenCV 3.0.0 and isn't part of OpenCV 2, which is what I'm currently using. Even though I'm late to the party, here's my own implementation that mimics drawMatches to the best of my ability.

I've provided my own images where one is of a camera man, and the other one is the same image but rotated by 55 degrees counter-clockwise.

The basic premise of what I wrote is that I allocate an output RGB image where the amount of rows is the maximum of the two images to accommodate for placing both of the images in the output image and the columns are simply the summation of both the columns together. I place each image in their corresponding spots, then run through a loop of all of the matched keypoints. I extract which keypoints matched between the two images, then extract their (x,y) co-ordinates. I then draw circles at each of the detected locations, then draw a line connecting these circles together.

Bear in mind that the detected keypoint in the second image is with respect to its own co-ordinate system. If you want to place this in the final output image, you need to offset the column co-ordinate by the amount of columns from the first image so that the column co-ordinate is with respect to the co-ordinate system of the output image.

Without further ado:

import numpy as np
import cv2

def drawMatches(img1, kp1, img2, kp2, matches):
    """
    My own implementation of cv2.drawMatches as OpenCV 2.4.9
    does not have this function available but it's supported in
    OpenCV 3.0.0

    This function takes in two images with their associated 
    keypoints, as well as a list of DMatch data structure (matches) 
    that contains which keypoints matched in which images.

    An image will be produced where a montage is shown with
    the first image followed by the second image beside it.

    Keypoints are delineated with circles, while lines are connected
    between matching keypoints.

    img1,img2 - Grayscale images
    kp1,kp2 - Detected list of keypoints through any of the OpenCV keypoint 
              detection algorithms
    matches - A list of matches of corresponding keypoints through any
              OpenCV keypoint matching algorithm
    """

    # Create a new output image that concatenates the two images together
    # (a.k.a) a montage
    rows1 = img1.shape[0]
    cols1 = img1.shape[1]
    rows2 = img2.shape[0]
    cols2 = img2.shape[1]

    out = np.zeros((max([rows1,rows2]),cols1+cols2,3), dtype='uint8')

    # Place the first image to the left
    out[:rows1,:cols1,:] = np.dstack([img1, img1, img1])

    # Place the next image to the right of it
    out[:rows2,cols1:cols1+cols2,:] = np.dstack([img2, img2, img2])

    # For each pair of points we have between both images
    # draw circles, then connect a line between them
    for mat in matches:

        # Get the matching keypoints for each of the images
        img1_idx = mat.queryIdx
        img2_idx = mat.trainIdx

        # x - columns
        # y - rows
        (x1,y1) = kp1[img1_idx].pt
        (x2,y2) = kp2[img2_idx].pt

        # Draw a small circle at both co-ordinates
        # radius 4
        # colour blue
        # thickness = 1
        cv2.circle(out, (int(x1),int(y1)), 4, (255, 0, 0), 1)   
        cv2.circle(out, (int(x2)+cols1,int(y2)), 4, (255, 0, 0), 1)

        # Draw a line in between the two points
        # thickness = 1
        # colour blue
        cv2.line(out, (int(x1),int(y1)), (int(x2)+cols1,int(y2)), (255, 0, 0), 1)


    # Show the image
    cv2.imshow('Matched Features', out)
    cv2.waitKey(0)
    cv2.destroyAllWindows()

---

To illustrate that this works, here are the two images that I used:

I used OpenCV's ORB detector to detect the keypoints, and used the normalized Hamming distance as the distance measure for similarity as this is a binary descriptor. As such:

import numpy as np
import cv2

img1 = cv2.imread('cameraman.png') # Original image
img2 = cv2.imread('cameraman_rot55.png') # Rotated image

# Create ORB detector with 1000 keypoints with a scaling pyramid factor
# of 1.2
orb = cv2.ORB(1000, 1.2)

# Detect keypoints of original image
(kp1,des1) = orb.detectAndCompute(img1, None)

# Detect keypoints of rotated image
(kp2,des2) = orb.detectAndCompute(img2, None)

# Create matcher
bf = cv2.BFMatcher(cv2.NORM_HAMMING, crossCheck=True)

# Do matching
matches = bf.match(des1,des2)

# Sort the matches based on distance.  Least distance
# is better
matches = sorted(matches, key=lambda val: val.distance)

# Show only the top 10 matches
drawMatches(img1, kp1, img2, kp2, matches[:10])

---

This is the image I get:

Lobule

Hii @Lobule When i am trying to run above code, I am getting Traceback (most recent call last): File "orb1.py", line 33, in <module> out[:rows1,:cols1,:] = np.dstack([img1, img1, img1]) ValueError: could not broadcast input array from shape (900,1440,9) into shape (900,1440,3) – Inkerman

@BhushanPatil - Read the docstring of the function carefully. It requires grayscale images. You are using RGB images. You need to convert the images to grayscale before you use the function. A simple call cv2.cvtColor should suffice: img = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY) will work. Please actually read the documentation of the function before using it next time. This is a standard skill all developers need to learn when using someone else's code. – Lobule

Answer 3

As the error message says, DRAW_MATCHES_FLAGS_DEFAULT is of type 'long'. It is a constant defined by the cv2 module, not a function. Unfortunately, the function you want, 'drawMatches' only exists in OpenCV's C++ interface.

Itemized

No longer true. It now exists in OpenCV 3.x and 4.x. However the above answers are workarounds for OpenCV 2.x. – Lobule