New: mean shift noise removal and color reduction

[fmw42]

As of IM 6.8.9.1, Imagemagick will include the mean shift technique for noise removal and color reduction/segmentation

The mean shift algorithm is iterative and thus slower the larger the window size. For each pixel, it gets all the pixels in the window centered at the pixel and excludes those that are outside the squared radius=(width-1)(height-1)/4 surrounding the pixel. From those pixels, it finds which of them are within the specified squared color distance from the current mean. It then computes a new x,y centroid from those coordinates and a new mean. This new x,y centroid is used as the center for a new window. This process is iterated until it converges and the final mean is then used to replace the original pixel value. It repeats this process for the next pixel, etc, until it processes all pixels in the image. Results are better when using other colorspaces rather than RGB. Recommend YIQ, YUV or YCbCr, which seem to give equivalent results.

The syntax is as follows:

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convert image -mean-shift WxH+D[%] result

where WxH is the window size and D is the color distance measured in the range 0 to 1 or 0 to 100%.

Examples of noise reduction for small window sizes:

Source image:



add gaussian noise

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convert peppers.png -seed 100 -attenuate 1 +noise gaussian peppers_gnoise1.png

Window size 7x7, RGB:

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convert peppers_gnoise1.png -mean-shift 7x7+10% peppers_gnoise1_im_ms_7x10_rgb.png

Window size 7x7, YIQ:

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 convert peppers_gnoise1.png -colorspace YIQ -mean-shift 7x7+10% -set colorspace YIQ -colorspace sRGB peppers_gnoise1_im_ms_7x10_yiq.png

Window size 9x9, YIQ:

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 convert peppers_gnoise1.png -colorspace YIQ -mean-shift 9x9+10% -set colorspace YIQ -colorspace sRGB peppers_gnoise1_im_ms_9x10_yiq.png

Window size 11x11, YIQ:

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 convert peppers_gnoise1.png -colorspace YIQ -mean-shift 11x11+10% -set colorspace YIQ -colorspace sRGB peppers_gnoise1_im_ms_9x11_yiq.png

Example of color reduction:

Window size 51x51, YIQ

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convert peppers.png -colorspace YIQ -monitor -mean-shift 51x51+10% +monitor -set colorspace YIQ -colorspace sRGB peppers_im_ms_51x10_yiq.png

Reduce depth and select 16 colors

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convert peppers_im_ms_51x10_yiq.png -depth 4 +dither -colors 16 peppers_im_ms_51x10_yiq_d4_c16.png

Reduce depth and select 16 colors from original image without the mean shift

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convert peppers.png -depth 4 +dither -colors 16 peppers_d4_c16.png

[snibgo]

Gosh! Canny, Hough and now mean-shift. IM goes from strength to strength.

I don't quite understand:

From those pixels, it then computes the new mean color (for each channel) and the new center x,y from those pixels that are within the specified color distance from the (center) pixel. This process is iterated ...

Perhaps this means (correct me if I'm wrong):

From those pixels, it then computes the new mean color (for each channel). It finds which of those pixels are within the specified color distance from this mean, and computes the center (centroid?) of those. This new x,y is used as the center of a new window. This process is iterated ...

[fmw42]

Thanks. I will try to make it clearer.