Crop Rectangle returned by minAreaRect OpenCV [Python]

Question

minAreaRect in OpenCV returns a rotated rectangle. How do I crop this part of the image which is inside the rectangle?

boxPoints returns the co-ordinates of the corner points of the rotated rectangle so one can access the pixels by looping through the points inside the box, but is there a faster way to crop in Python?

EDIT

See code in my answer below.

Answer 1

here a function that does this task:

import cv2
import numpy as np

def crop_minAreaRect(img, rect):

    # rotate img
    angle = rect[2]
    rows,cols = img.shape[0], img.shape[1]
    M = cv2.getRotationMatrix2D((cols/2,rows/2),angle,1)
    img_rot = cv2.warpAffine(img,M,(cols,rows))

    # rotate bounding box
    rect0 = (rect[0], rect[1], 0.0) 
    box = cv2.boxPoints(rect0)
    pts = np.int0(cv2.transform(np.array([box]), M))[0]    
    pts[pts < 0] = 0

    # crop
    img_crop = img_rot[pts[1][1]:pts[0][1], 
                       pts[1][0]:pts[2][0]]

    return img_crop

here an example usage

# generate image
img = np.zeros((1000, 1000), dtype=np.uint8)
img = cv2.line(img,(400,400),(511,511),1,120)
img = cv2.line(img,(300,300),(700,500),1,120)

# find contours / rectangle
_,contours,_ = cv2.findContours(img, 1, 1)
rect = cv2.minAreaRect(contours[0])

# crop
img_croped = crop_minAreaRect(img, rect)

# show
import matplotlib.pylab as plt
plt.figure()
plt.subplot(1,2,1)
plt.imshow(img)
plt.subplot(1,2,2)
plt.imshow(img_croped)
plt.show()

this is the output

Answer 2

Here's the code to perform the above task. To speed up the process, instead of first rotating the entire image and cropping, part of the image which has the rotated rectangle is first cropped, then rotated, and cropped again to give the final result.

# Let cnt be the contour and img be the input

rect = cv2.minAreaRect(cnt)  
box = cv2.boxPoints(rect) 
box = np.int0(box)

W = rect[1][0]
H = rect[1][1]

Xs = [i[0] for i in box]
Ys = [i[1] for i in box]
x1 = min(Xs)
x2 = max(Xs)
y1 = min(Ys)
y2 = max(Ys)

angle = rect[2]
if angle < -45:
    angle += 90

# Center of rectangle in source image
center = ((x1+x2)/2,(y1+y2)/2)
# Size of the upright rectangle bounding the rotated rectangle
size = (x2-x1, y2-y1)
M = cv2.getRotationMatrix2D((size[0]/2, size[1]/2), angle, 1.0)
# Cropped upright rectangle
cropped = cv2.getRectSubPix(img, size, center)
cropped = cv2.warpAffine(cropped, M, size)
croppedW = H if H > W else W
croppedH = H if H < W else W
# Final cropped & rotated rectangle
croppedRotated = cv2.getRectSubPix(cropped, (int(croppedW),int(croppedH)), (size[0]/2, size[1]/2))