How to count the number of pipes in an image?

Hi! I need to inventory the number of pipes in a storage. I'm new using Matlab and I need to know if it's possible to count them using an image. Here's an example of the image.

Can someone help me with the code?

Thank you in advance

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Try imfindcircles(). Here's a demo: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/34365-findcirclesgui

[Anand]

This does a reasonable job. There are a few missed circles, but you can play around with the EdgeThreshold or any of the other parameters to get a better result.

[centers,radii] = imfindcircles(im,[25 ...
35],'objectpolarity','dark','sensitivity',0.97);
imshow(im);viscircles(centers,radii,'EdgeColor','b');

[Fernando]

Thank you very much, that was exactly what I was looking for.