I have an Image on which i have extracted several contours with 1st) cvCanny and 2nd) findContours. I’m only interested in the external Points, so I got several closed contours that i do analyse further. I’m looking for ellipses or circles and due to some overlap in the image i got some contours that are actually interesting for me but my algorithm discards them because they do not look elliptic.
Is there a way to dividide those contours, e.g. based on the small connecting “bridges” between two overlapping contours detected as one?
In this example i would want to just cut the rod on the lower right corner.
Due to performance issues, Hough circle detection is not an option.
Thanks!
Never worked with these sorts of algorithms before, but here’s an idea: Define a minimum length L between points less than which you’d want to create a bridge. Then for each point on the contour, construct the tangent line segment of length L with its origin at that point. Wherever that tangent line segment intersects two points you will have a place where the contour is effectively getting ‘pinched’ as with the rod/ellipse junction in your figure. When this happens draw the bridge, which will be the tangent segment itself.
It might be easier to imagine or do if you take a single segment at a single point (say at the top of your curve, oriented to the left) and you move the segment around the contour, moving it along the bridges created online when the above condition is met.