Question

I need to automatically detect dips in a 2D plot, like the regions marked with red circles in the figure below. I’m only interested in the “main” dips, meaning the dips have to span a minimum length in the x axis. The number of dips is unknown, i.e., different plots will contain different numbers of dips. Any ideas?

Update:

As requested, here’s the sample data, together with an attempt to smooth it using median filtering, as suggested by vines.

Looks like I need now a robust way to approximate the derivative at each point that would ignore the little blips that remain in the data. Is there any standard approach?

y <- c(0.9943,0.9917,0.9879,0.9831,0.9553,0.9316,0.9208,0.9119,0.8857,0.7951,0.7605,0.8074,0.7342,0.6374,0.6035,0.5331,0.4781,0.4825,0.4825,0.4879,0.5374,0.4600,0.3668,0.3456,0.4282,0.3578,0.3630,0.3399,0.3578,0.4116,0.3762,0.3668,0.4420,0.4749,0.4556,0.4458,0.5084,0.5043,0.5043,0.5331,0.4781,0.5623,0.6604,0.5900,0.5084,0.5802,0.5802,0.6174,0.6124,0.6374,0.6827,0.6906,0.7034,0.7418,0.7817,0.8311,0.8001,0.7912,0.7912,0.7540,0.7951,0.7817,0.7644,0.7912,0.8311,0.8311,0.7912,0.7688,0.7418,0.7232,0.7147,0.6906,0.6715,0.6681,0.6374,0.6516,0.6650,0.6604,0.6124,0.6334,0.6374,0.5514,0.5514,0.5412,0.5514,0.5374,0.5473,0.4825,0.5084,0.5126,0.5229,0.5126,0.5043,0.4379,0.4781,0.4600,0.4781,0.3806,0.4078,0.3096,0.3263,0.3399,0.3184,0.2820,0.2167,0.2122,0.2080,0.2558,0.2255,0.1921,0.1766,0.1732,0.1205,0.1732,0.0723,0.0701,0.0405,0.0643,0.0771,0.1018,0.0587,0.0884,0.0884,0.1240,0.1088,0.0554,0.0607,0.0441,0.0387,0.0490,0.0478,0.0231,0.0414,0.0297,0.0701,0.0502,0.0567,0.0405,0.0363,0.0464,0.0701,0.0832,0.0991,0.1322,0.1998,0.3146,0.3146,0.3184,0.3578,0.3311,0.3184,0.4203,0.3578,0.3578,0.3578,0.4282,0.5084,0.5802,0.5667,0.5473,0.5514,0.5331,0.4749,0.4037,0.4116,0.4203,0.3184,0.4037,0.4037,0.4282,0.4513,0.4749,0.4116,0.4825,0.4918,0.4879,0.4918,0.4825,0.4245,0.4333,0.4651,0.4879,0.5412,0.5802,0.5126,0.4458,0.5374,0.4600,0.4600,0.4600,0.4600,0.3992,0.4879,0.4282,0.4333,0.3668,0.3005,0.3096,0.3847,0.3939,0.3630,0.3359,0.2292,0.2292,0.2748,0.3399,0.2963,0.2963,0.2385,0.2531,0.1805,0.2531,0.2786,0.3456,0.3399,0.3491,0.4037,0.3885,0.3806,0.2748,0.2700,0.2657,0.2963,0.2865,0.2167,0.2080,0.1844,0.2041,0.1602,0.1416,0.2041,0.1958,0.1018,0.0744,0.0677,0.0909,0.0789,0.0723,0.0660,0.1322,0.1532,0.1060,0.1018,0.1060,0.1150,0.0789,0.1266,0.0965,0.1732,0.1766,0.1766,0.1805,0.2820,0.3096,0.2602,0.2080,0.2333,0.2385,0.2385,0.2432,0.1602,0.2122,0.2385,0.2333,0.2558,0.2432,0.2292,0.2209,0.2483,0.2531,0.2432,0.2432,0.2432,0.2432,0.3053,0.3630,0.3578,0.3630,0.3668,0.3263,0.3992,0.4037,0.4556,0.4703,0.5173,0.6219,0.6412,0.7275,0.6984,0.6756,0.7079,0.7192,0.7342,0.7458,0.7501,0.7540,0.7605,0.7605,0.7342,0.7912,0.7951,0.8036,0.8074,0.8074,0.8118,0.7951,0.8118,0.8242,0.8488,0.8650,0.8488,0.8311,0.8424,0.7912,0.7951,0.8001,0.8001,0.7458,0.7192,0.6984,0.6412,0.6516,0.5900,0.5802,0.5802,0.5762,0.5623,0.5374,0.4556,0.4556,0.4333,0.3762,0.3456,0.4037,0.3311,0.3263,0.3311,0.3717,0.3762,0.3717,0.3668,0.3491,0.4203,0.4037,0.4149,0.4037,0.3992,0.4078,0.4651,0.4967,0.5229,0.5802,0.5802,0.5846,0.6293,0.6412,0.6374,0.6604,0.7317,0.7034,0.7573,0.7573,0.7573,0.7772,0.7605,0.8036,0.7951,0.7817,0.7869,0.7724,0.7869,0.7869,0.7951,0.7644,0.7912,0.7275,0.7342,0.7275,0.6984,0.7342,0.7605,0.7418,0.7418,0.7275,0.7573,0.7724,0.8118,0.8521,0.8823,0.8984,0.9119,0.9316,0.9512)

yy <- runmed(y, 41)
plot(y, type="l", ylim=c(0,1), ylab="", xlab="", lwd=0.5)
points(yy, col="blue", type="l", lwd=2)

Answer 1

EDITED : function strips the regions to contain nothing but the lowest part, if wanted.

Actually, Using the mean is easier than using the median. This allows you to find regions where the real values are continuously below the mean. The median is not smooth enough for an easy application.

One example function to do this would be :

FindLowRegion <- function(x,n=length(x)/4,tol=length(x)/20,p=0.5){
    nx <- length(x)
    n <-  2*(n %/% 2) + 1
    # smooth out based on means
    sx <- rowMeans(embed(c(rep(NA,n/2),x,rep(NA,n/2)),n),na.rm=T)
    # find which series are far from the mean
    rlesx <- rle((sx-x)>0)
    # construct start and end of regions
    int <- embed(cumsum(c(1,rlesx$lengths)),2)
    # which regions fulfill requirements
    id <- rlesx$value & rlesx$length > tol
    # Cut regions to be in general smaller than median
    regions <-
    apply(int[id,],1,function(i){
        i <- min(i):max(i)
        tmp <- x[i]
        id <- which(tmp < quantile(tmp,p))
        id <- min(id):max(id)
        i[id]            
    })
    # return
    unlist(regions)
}

where

• n determines how much values are used to calculate the running mean,
• tol determines how many consecutive values should be lower than the running mean to talk about a low region, and
• p determines the cutoff used (as a quantile) for stripping the regions to their lowest part. When p=1, the complete lower region is shown.

Function is tweaked to work on data as you presented, but the numbers might need to be adjusted a bit to work with other data.

This function returns a set of indices, which allows you to find the low regions. Illustrated with your y vector :

Lows <- FindLowRegion(y)

newx <- seq_along(y)
newy <- ifelse(newx %in% Lows,y,NA)
plot(y, col="blue", type="l", lwd=2)
lines(newx,newy,col="red",lwd="3")

Gives :