how to recognise a change in honey comb pattern?

Hi, I am utterly new to Matlab so please forgive my useless ignorance.

I am trying to do pattern recognition/ analysis in particular I want to be able to tell if cells of honey comb are filled or not. I have this theory that if I manage to pixalate the image so that each pixel is a honeycomb cell I can then look at the pixels colour output to see of the cell has been filled or not.

if there are any other suggestions please do help. thank you

Edit, I have added some photos, the zoomed in version is just showing a close up, but really I want to analyse the darker honeycomb (looks like it was shot with a shotgun) and the yellow honeycomb with the lids on the cells

close up version of image

Base Image

Image to that should be detected as bad, notice the white and brown in the cells.

[Image Analyst]

Usually when people ask for image processing advice, they include an image. Can you insert your image?

[Julia]

lol I probably also should have checked back to the forum... I added the images please I am as clueless as last week even though I spent hours staring at these forums.

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Do you have to count each and every one? Probably not. How about if you just use kmeans to divide into 3 color classes (black, white, orange) and then calculate area fractions for each color class? See this demo: http://www.mathworks.com/products/demos/image/color_seg_k/ipexhistology.html

[Julia]

that sounds interesting I will try it as my evening entertainment and then get back t you. thank you so much

[Image Analyst]

If you have enough money, you might look into getting a telecentric lens so you don't have the perspective issues. A telecentric lens will make all the honeycomb cylinders look vertical, not tilted like you have now.

[Julia]

thanks for the tip, the actual pictures will scanned from the real thing, it should be parallel or am I wrong? I must admit I got a bit sidetracked, so the tutorial is my task today.

[Image Analyst]

What do you mean scanned? You can't put a beehive on a flatbed scanner!

[Julia]

that's exactly what I'm doing, I have some images already it does work very well but (luckily) non of the hives I am working with have the shown pattern above, so I am using these test images.

I ran the code and it worked well (thank you!!!), now I just need to have it analyse the % of colours depicted.

[Image Analyst]

I imagine the bees must not like being smashed onto a flatbed scanner. If you need any more help, ask specific questions. Otherwise, please mark as Accepted if we're done.