Find extreme outer points in image with Python OpenCV

Question

I have this image of a statue.

I'm trying to find the top, bottom, left, and right most points on the statue. Is there a way to measure the edge of each side to determine the outer most point on the statue? I want to get the (x,y) coordinate of each side. I have tried to use cv2.findContours() and cv2.drawContours() to get an outline of the statue.

import cv2

img = cv2.imread('statue.png')

gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)

contours = cv2.findContours(gray, cv2.RETR_TREE, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)[0]
cv2.drawContours(img, contours, -1, (0, 200, 0), 3)

cv2.imshow('img', img)
cv2.waitKey()

Answer 1

Here's a potential approach:

• Convert image to grayscale and Gaussian blur

• Threshold to obtain a binary image

• Find contours

• Obtain outer coordinates

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After converting to grayscale and blurring image, we threshold to get a binary image

Now we find contours using cv2.findContours(). Since OpenCV uses Numpy arrays to encode images, a contour is simply a Numpy array of (x,y) coordinates. We can slice the Numpy array and use argmin() or argmax() to determine the outer left, right, top, and bottom coordinates like this

left = tuple(c[c[:, :, 0].argmin()][0])
right = tuple(c[c[:, :, 0].argmax()][0])
top = tuple(c[c[:, :, 1].argmin()][0])
bottom = tuple(c[c[:, :, 1].argmax()][0])

Here's the result

left: (162, 527)

right: (463, 467)

top: (250, 8)

bottom: (381, 580)

import cv2
import numpy as np

# Load image, grayscale, Gaussian blur, threshold
image = cv2.imread('1.png')
gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
blur = cv2.GaussianBlur(gray, (3,3), 0)
thresh = cv2.threshold(blur, 220, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV)[1]

# Find contours
cnts = cv2.findContours(thresh, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
cnts = cnts[0] if len(cnts) == 2 else cnts[1]
c = max(cnts, key=cv2.contourArea)

# Obtain outer coordinates
left = tuple(c[c[:, :, 0].argmin()][0])
right = tuple(c[c[:, :, 0].argmax()][0])
top = tuple(c[c[:, :, 1].argmin()][0])
bottom = tuple(c[c[:, :, 1].argmax()][0])

# Draw dots onto image
cv2.drawContours(image, [c], -1, (36, 255, 12), 2)
cv2.circle(image, left, 8, (0, 50, 255), -1)
cv2.circle(image, right, 8, (0, 255, 255), -1)
cv2.circle(image, top, 8, (255, 50, 0), -1)
cv2.circle(image, bottom, 8, (255, 255, 0), -1)

print('left: {}'.format(left))
print('right: {}'.format(right))
print('top: {}'.format(top))
print('bottom: {}'.format(bottom))
cv2.imshow('thresh', thresh)
cv2.imshow('image', image)
cv2.waitKey()