Question

I’m using the Hough transform in OpenCV to detect lines. However, I know in advance that I only need lines within a very limited range of angles (about 10 degrees or so). I’m doing this in a very performance sensitive setting, so I’d like to avoid the extra work spent detecting lines at other angles, lines I know in advance I don’t care about.

I could extract the Hough source from OpenCV and just hack it to take min_rho and max_rho parameters, but I’d like a less fragile approach (have to manually update my code w/ each OpenCV update, etc.).

What’s the best approach here?

Answer 1

Well, i’ve modified the icvHoughlines function to go for a certain range of angles. I’m sure there’s cleaner ways that plays with memory allocation as well, but I got a speed gain going from 100ms to 33ms for a range of angle going from 180deg to 60deg, so i’m happy with that.

Note that this code also outputs the accumulator value. Also, I only output 1 line because that fit my purposes but there was no gain really there.

static void
icvHoughLinesStandard2( const CvMat* img, float rho, float theta,
                       int threshold, CvSeq *lines, int linesMax )
{
    cv::AutoBuffer<int> _accum, _sort_buf;
    cv::AutoBuffer<float> _tabSin, _tabCos;

    const uchar* image;
    int step, width, height;
    int numangle, numrho;
    int total = 0;
    float ang;
    int r, n;
    int i, j;
    float irho = 1 / rho;
    double scale;

    CV_Assert( CV_IS_MAT(img) && CV_MAT_TYPE(img->type) == CV_8UC1 );

    image = img->data.ptr;
    step = img->step;
    width = img->cols;
    height = img->rows;

    numangle = cvRound(CV_PI / theta);
    numrho = cvRound(((width + height) * 2 + 1) / rho);

    _accum.allocate((numangle+2) * (numrho+2));
    _sort_buf.allocate(numangle * numrho);
    _tabSin.allocate(numangle);
    _tabCos.allocate(numangle);
    int *accum = _accum, *sort_buf = _sort_buf;
    float *tabSin = _tabSin, *tabCos = _tabCos;

    memset( accum, 0, sizeof(accum[0]) * (numangle+2) * (numrho+2) );

    // find n and ang limits (in our case we want 60 to 120
    float limit_min = 60.0/180.0*PI;
    float limit_max = 120.0/180.0*PI;

    //num_steps = (limit_max - limit_min)/theta;
    int start_n = floor(limit_min/theta);
    int stop_n = floor(limit_max/theta);

    for( ang = limit_min, n = start_n; n < stop_n; ang += theta, n++ )
    {
        tabSin[n] = (float)(sin(ang) * irho);
        tabCos[n] = (float)(cos(ang) * irho);
    }



    // stage 1. fill accumulator
    for( i = 0; i < height; i++ )
        for( j = 0; j < width; j++ )
        {
            if( image[i * step + j] != 0 )
                        //
        for( n = start_n; n < stop_n; n++ )
                {
                    r = cvRound( j * tabCos[n] + i * tabSin[n] );
                    r += (numrho - 1) / 2;
                    accum[(n+1) * (numrho+2) + r+1]++;
                }
        }



    int max_accum = 0;
    int max_ind = 0;

    for( r = 0; r < numrho; r++ )
    {
        for( n = start_n; n < stop_n; n++ )
        {
            int base = (n+1) * (numrho+2) + r+1;
            if (accum[base] > max_accum)
            {
                max_accum = accum[base];
                max_ind = base;
            }
        }
    }   

    CvLinePolar2 line;
    scale = 1./(numrho+2);
    int idx = max_ind;
    n = cvFloor(idx*scale) - 1;
    r = idx - (n+1)*(numrho+2) - 1;
    line.rho = (r - (numrho - 1)*0.5f) * rho;
    line.angle = n * theta;
    line.votes = accum[idx];
    cvSeqPush( lines, &line );

}