Detecting edges of a card with blurry edges and different backgrounds

Question

This is my test photo

I am trying to find the edges of the card. However, as you can see, the edges are somewhat blurry.

To find the edges i first enhance the contrast of the image so hopefully blurry edges will be less blurry and much more easier to find: Then i used Gaussian Blur to smooth it a little (I tried removing Gaussian blur, but the the edge detector found to many details in the background + in the card).

Then i used canny with "dynamic thresholds" and got the following result: As you can see, i barley found any edges of the card (except the left one, which was easy because of the dark background). Is there a robust (i don't want to "over fit" on this image) method to find straight blurry edges?

Found some suggestions here: Blurry edge detection How to find accurate corner positions of a distorted rectangle from blurry image in python?, but none resulted in satisfying edges.

The full code:

def auto_canny(image, sigma=0.5):
    v = np.median(image)
    lower = int(max(0, (1.0 - sigma) * v))
    upper = int(min(255, (1.0 + sigma) * v))
    return cv2.Canny(image, lower, upper)

def add_contrast(img, contrast_level=8):
    lab = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2LAB)

    l, a, b = cv2.split(lab)

    clahe = cv2.createCLAHE(clipLimit=3.0, tileGridSize=(contrast_level, contrast_level))
    cl = clahe.apply(l)

    limg = cv2.merge((cl, a, b))

    final = cv2.cvtColor(limg, cv2.COLOR_LAB2BGR)

    return final

# ------------------------------------------ #
# FIND EDGES
# ------------------------------------------ #
img = add_contrast(img=img, contrast_level=8)

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

kernel_size = 5
blur_gray = cv2.GaussianBlur(gray, (kernel_size, kernel_size), 0)

edges = auto_canny(image=blur_gray) 

# Show images for testing
cv2.imshow('edges', edges)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()

Answer 1

This is also not a complete solution, but if the red parts are problematic, you can first inpaint those parts using cv2.inpaint() function. Then you can apply the rest of your approach to find the card edges.

# create an inpainting mask with "red-enough" pixels
mask = cv2.inRange(img_src_rgb, np.array([200,0,0]), np.array([255,50,50]))
# enlarge the mask to cover the borders
kernel = np.ones((3,3),np.uint8)
mask = cv2.dilate(mask,kernel,iterations = 1)
# inpaint the red parts using Navier-Stokes based approach
img_dst = cv2.inpaint(img_src, mask,50,cv2.INPAINT_NS)
cv2.imshow("no_red", img_dst)

Resulting image is below.

EDIT: Now that we know what you are asking, below is a complete solution.

After the inpainting, you can apply Hough Transform to find the strong straight lines in the image.

gray = cv2.cvtColor(img_dst, cv2.COLOR_RGB2GRAY)
edges = auto_canny(gray) # your auto_canny function, WITHOUT blur
lines = cv2.HoughLines(edges, 1, np.pi/90, 50)
for line in lines:
    rho,theta = line[0]
    a = np.cos(theta)
    b = np.sin(theta)
    x0 = a*rho
    y0 = b*rho
    x1 = int(x0 + 10000*(-b))
    y1 = int(y0 + 10000*(a))
    x2 = int(x0 - 10000*(-b))
    y2 = int(y0 - 10000*(a))
    cv2.line(img_dst,(x1,y1),(x2,y2),(0,255,0),1)

cv2.imwrite('linesDetected.jpg', img_dst)

Again, the resulting lines are below.

Answer 2

You can improve the solution by filling parts of the background using cv2.floodFill.

Enhancing the contrast before finding edges is a nice idea, but it looks like it creates some artifacts that makes finding the edges more difficult.

Here is a code sample:

import numpy as np
import cv2


def auto_canny(image, sigma=0.5):
    v = np.median(image)
    lower = int(max(0, (1.0 - sigma) * v))
    upper = int(min(255, (1.0 + sigma) * v))
    return cv2.Canny(image, lower, upper)


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

h, w = img.shape[0], img.shape[1]

# Seed points for floodFill (use few points at each corner for improving robustness)
seedPoints = ((5, 5), (w-5, 5), (5, h-5), (w-5, h-5), 
              (w//2, 5), (w//2, h-5), (5, h//2), (w-5, h//2), 
              (w//4, 5), (w//4, h-5), (5, h//4),  (w-5, h//4),
              (w*3//4, 5), (w*3//4, h-5), (5, h*3//4),  (w-5, h*3//4))

# Fill parts of the background with black color
for seed in seedPoints:
    cv2.floodFill(img, None, seedPoint=seed, newVal=(0, 0, 0), loDiff=(2, 2, 2), upDiff=(2, 2, 2))

# ------------------------------------------ #
# FIND EDGES
# ------------------------------------------ #
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
cv2.imshow("gray", gray)

kernel_size = 5
blur_gray = cv2.GaussianBlur(gray, (kernel_size, kernel_size), 0)

# Second, process edge detection use Canny.
edges = auto_canny(image=blur_gray)

# Show images for testing
cv2.imshow('edges', edges)
cv2.waitKey(0)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()

Result:

I know it's not a complete solution, but I hope it helps...