Watershed

In this post we continue exploring and experimenting with topics from the PluralSight course Building Image Processing Applications Using scikit-image by Janani Ravi. The topic for this post is Watershed.

In image processing, a watershed (image processing) is a transformation defined on a grayscale image. The name refers metaphorically to a geological watershed, or drainage divide, which separates adjacent drainage basins. The watershed transformation treats the image it operates upon like a topographic map, with the brightness of each point representing its height, and finds the lines that run along the tops of ridges. These lines are then used to segment the image into regions. Continue reading “Watershed”

RAG Thresholding

This morning I read some news from different sources. I am amazed how facts are edited to provide some information but with a lot of bias in favor of the group reporting.

The first one was regarding how 50% of animal species have been decimated. The actual news mentioned that about 50% of species in the world are in decline. Yet some 3% are flourishing. 

On a different set of news, wildfires are out of control in Canada. The effects on the weather in different states in the USA is being felt including in Minnesota. For the past week or so we have had high values in the air quality which indicate many pollutants coming from the fires in Canada. The news stated that this is all due to global warming. Continue reading “RAG Thresholding”

Erosion Dilation to Fill Holes and Find Peaks

In this post we will experiment with the contents of the section on Filling Holes and Finding Peaks Using Erosion and Dilation of the PluralSight course Building Image Processing Applications Using scikit-image by Janani Ravi.

It seems that this as most of the other sections stand on its own. The idea is to find out that such a library exists, what it is used for, experiment with it, and if the need arises in the future, you will have a basic understanding of how to use the feature. Continue reading “Erosion Dilation to Fill Holes and Find Peaks”

Denoising

Good morning. Similar to yesterday’s weather here in the Twin CIties of Minneapolis and St. Paul, our high temperature for the day is forecasted to be 90F. We are still in spring but it is starting to feel like summer.

Yesterday my wife and I were planning to walk for about ten miles. Due to the temperature and humidity we decided to cut it short to just five. Today we are just planning on five miles.

Today we will experiment with denoising images. This post is based on the contents of a section in the PluralSight course Building Image Processing Applications Using scikit-image by Janani Ravi. Continue reading “Denoising”

Corner Detection

It is a summer Saturday morning in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota. The temperature will go up to 87F. Around 10:00 AM, before it gets too hot, my wife and I will go out for a leisure walk of 10 miles. Last night I had a hard time sleeping so hopefully the mild exercise will help this evening.

In this post we continue to watch the PluralSight course Building Image Processing Applications Using scikit-image by Janani Ravi. She uses a Jupyter notebook. In this post we will use VSCode with GitHub Copilot. I should disclose that I am a Microsoft employee and have been using VSCode for a few years. When possible I like to follow the KISS principle so I prefer to use the minimum number of IDEs that support all the programming languages I wish to use. Why complicate life using as many IDEs as one can find and never become proficient on all of them. Continue reading “Corner Detection”

Histogram of Oriented Gradients

This morning on LinkedIn, NEWSLETTER, Big Technology, A newsletter about Big Tech and society, by Alex Kantrowitz I listened to the podcast Let’s Talk About Temu and Shein, The Fast-Rising, China-Based Retailers Threatening U.S. Mainstays. 

On Big Technology Podcast, Ranjan Roy and Alex Kantrowitz spoke with New York Magazine contributing editor John Herrman about Temu and Shein, the fast-rising, China-based retailers that are threatening the U.S. mainstays including H&M and Amazon.

Continue reading “Histogram of Oriented Gradients”

Canny Edge Detector

Welcome to the last section of the first chapter on the PluralSight course Building Image Processing Applications Using scikit-image by Janani Ravi.

In this post we will deal with the Canny edge detector. It is a more complex edge detector that Roberts or Sobel. Continue reading “Canny Edge Detector”

Convex Hull

In this post we will learn a few things about a convex hull.

Before we get into the main subject I would like to chat for a few on a different subject. Currently I continue to read Natural Language Processing by Ekaterina Kockmar. Earlier this morning I was reading the section 3.2.2 Matching forms of the same word: Morphological processing. In the current chapter we are trying to develop an information retrieval system. In a nutshell we have a set of documents of interest and a set of queries. The idea is that given a query we want to return relevant documents in descending order. Sounds very much like what Google search does. Of course the objectives are not to write something to compete with searches on web browsers, but to give us an idea of the general steps needed to perform such a task.

In particular I was reading about Stemming. The idea is that when you have words in a query and wish to map them to words on a document, the forms of a word may be different. A simple word match would not work (e.g., continue and continuation) because for a computer the words are different. If we implement an algorithm using stemming we will be able to match the words.

As I was reading the section an old Spanish saying (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saying) “The devil knows more through being old than through being a  devil.” If you stop for a few and think about the Spanish saying you should reach the conclusion that it is wrong. In general if you do not reflect on what happened, the good and bad decisions you made, you will not learn and therefore you will not become wiser. For the Spanish saying to be true one must assume that the devil reflects on past events. Since the devil is a personification of evil and not a being like us, the saying is just a saying. Continue reading “Convex Hull”

OKRs for Personal Goals

I continue to read two or more chapters per day from “Measure What Matters” by John Doerr. I wish I could have enough time per day.

The book is oriented to achieving business goals using something called OKRs. They are something like KPIs but the difference is in how they are generated, published, maintained, and evaluated. Continue reading “OKRs for Personal Goals”

Measure What Matters by John Doerr

Good day! Hope you are doing well. This post does not cover a technical subject. If you follow my blog, you might have noticed that about one out of five books I purchase and read are not technical. I believe that success is based on both technical expertise and proper management.

A few decades ago I developed the software methodology which I named Cyclic Development Process (CDP for short). I applied it and tweaked it in order to simplify the development of custom and product systems. It worked very well for me. Continue reading “Measure What Matters by John Doerr”