Sclera detection and extraction

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Matija
Matija on 19 Jun 2013
Hello all,
Often when taking a photo of people, due to a failure during white balance or significant exposure problems, the tones of people faces are somewhat red or yellow or...
Basically what I am trying to do is to determine if skin colour is good and natural or not.
To do that, I should detect white sclera which will be used as a reference color.
My question is how to accurately detect sclera? Theoretically, I need only one pixel.
What I did?
I used Viola-Jones algorithm to detect eyes and applied modified circular Hough transform for iris localization.
Now when I have a precise iris position, what should I do next? Any ideas?
There are some earlier works where they used masks, tresholding etc.
Regards, M.

Answers (3)

Image Analyst
Image Analyst on 19 Jun 2013
If you just want to do a crude white balancing where you linearly scale your red, green, and blue channels to match and you know the location of your sclera, then you can use/modify this crude white balancing app:
% Does a crude white balancing by linearly scaling each color channel.
clc; % Clear the command window.
workspace; % Make sure the workspace panel is showing.
format longg;
format compact;
fontSize = 15;
% Read in a standard MATLAB gray scale demo image.
folder = fullfile(matlabroot, '\toolbox\images\imdemos');
button = menu('Use which demo image?', 'onion', 'Kids');
% Assign the proper filename.
if button == 1
baseFileName = 'onion.png';
elseif button == 2
baseFileName = 'kids.tif';
end
% Read in a standard MATLAB color demo image.
folder = fullfile(matlabroot, '\toolbox\images\imdemos');
% Get the full filename, with path prepended.
fullFileName = fullfile(folder, baseFileName);
if ~exist(fullFileName, 'file')
% Didn't find it there. Check the search path for it.
fullFileName = baseFileName; % No path this time.
if ~exist(fullFileName, 'file')
% Still didn't find it. Alert user.
errorMessage = sprintf('Error: %s does not exist.', fullFileName);
uiwait(warndlg(errorMessage));
return;
end
end
[rgbImage colorMap] = imread(fullFileName);
% Get the dimensions of the image. numberOfColorBands should be = 3.
[rows columns numberOfColorBands] = size(rgbImage);
% If it's an indexed image (such as Kids), turn it into an rgbImage;
if numberOfColorBands == 1
rgbImage = ind2rgb(rgbImage, colorMap); % Will be in the 0-1 range.
rgbImage = uint8(255*rgbImage); % Convert to the 0-255 range.
end
% Display the original color image full screen
imshow(rgbImage);
title('Double-click inside box to finish box', 'FontSize', fontSize);
% Enlarge figure to full screen.
set(gcf, 'units','normalized','outerposition', [0 0 1 1]);
% Have user specify the area they want to define as neutral colored (white or gray).
promptMessage = sprintf('Drag out a box over the ROI you want to be neutral colored.\nDouble-click inside of it to finish it.');
titleBarCaption = 'Continue?';
button = questdlg(promptMessage, titleBarCaption, 'Draw', 'Cancel', 'Draw');
if strcmpi(button, 'Cancel')
return;
end
hBox = imrect;
roiPosition = wait(hBox); % Wait for user to double-click
roiPosition % Display in command window.
% Get box coordinates so we can crop a portion out of the full sized image.
xCoords = [roiPosition(1), roiPosition(1)+roiPosition(3), roiPosition(1)+roiPosition(3), roiPosition(1), roiPosition(1)];
yCoords = [roiPosition(2), roiPosition(2), roiPosition(2)+roiPosition(4), roiPosition(2)+roiPosition(4), roiPosition(2)];
croppingRectangle = roiPosition;
% Display (shrink) the original color image in the upper left.
subplot(2, 4, 1);
imshow(rgbImage);
title('Original Color Image', 'FontSize', fontSize);
% Crop out the ROI.
whitePortion = imcrop(rgbImage, croppingRectangle);
subplot(2, 4, 5);
imshow(whitePortion);
caption = sprintf('ROI.\nWe will Define this to be "White"');
title(caption, 'FontSize', fontSize);
% Extract the individual red, green, and blue color channels.
redChannel = whitePortion(:, :, 1);
greenChannel = whitePortion(:, :, 2);
blueChannel = whitePortion(:, :, 3);
% Display the color channels.
subplot(2, 4, 2);
imshow(redChannel);
title('Red Channel ROI', 'FontSize', fontSize);
subplot(2, 4, 3);
imshow(greenChannel);
title('Green Channel ROI', 'FontSize', fontSize);
subplot(2, 4, 4);
imshow(blueChannel);
title('Blue Channel ROI', 'FontSize', fontSize);
% Get the means of each color channel
meanR = mean2(redChannel);
meanG = mean2(greenChannel);
meanB = mean2(blueChannel);
% Let's compute and display the histograms.
[pixelCount grayLevels] = imhist(redChannel);
subplot(2, 4, 6);
bar(pixelCount);
grid on;
caption = sprintf('Histogram of original Red ROI.\nMean Red = %.1f', meanR);
title(caption, 'FontSize', fontSize);
xlim([0 grayLevels(end)]); % Scale x axis manually.
% Let's compute and display the histograms.
[pixelCount grayLevels] = imhist(greenChannel);
subplot(2, 4, 7);
bar(pixelCount);
grid on;
caption = sprintf('Histogram of original Green ROI.\nMean Green = %.1f', meanR);
title(caption, 'FontSize', fontSize);
xlim([0 grayLevels(end)]); % Scale x axis manually.
% Let's compute and display the histograms.
[pixelCount grayLevels] = imhist(blueChannel);
subplot(2, 4, 8);
bar(pixelCount);
grid on;
caption = sprintf('Histogram of original Blue ROI.\nMean Blue = %.1f', meanR);
title(caption, 'FontSize', fontSize);
xlim([0 grayLevels(end)]); % Scale x axis manually.
% specify the desired mean.
desiredMean = mean([meanR, meanG, meanB])
message = sprintf('Red mean = %.1f\nGreen mean = %.1f\nBlue mean = %.1f\nWe will make all of these means %.1f',...
meanR, meanG, meanB, desiredMean);
uiwait(helpdlg(message));
% Linearly scale the image in the cropped ROI.
correctionFactorR = desiredMean / meanR;
correctionFactorG = desiredMean / meanG;
correctionFactorB = desiredMean / meanB;
redChannel = uint8(single(redChannel) * correctionFactorR);
greenChannel = uint8(single(greenChannel) * correctionFactorG);
blueChannel = uint8(single(blueChannel) * correctionFactorB);
% Recombine into an RGB image
% Recombine separate color channels into a single, true color RGB image.
correctedRgbImage = cat(3, redChannel, greenChannel, blueChannel);
figure;
% Display the original color image.
subplot(2, 4, 5);
imshow(correctedRgbImage);
title('Color-Corrected ROI', 'FontSize', fontSize);
% Enlarge figure to full screen.
set(gcf, 'units','normalized','outerposition',[0 0 1 1]);
% Display the color channels.
subplot(2, 4, 2);
imshow(redChannel);
title('Corrected Red Channel ROI', 'FontSize', fontSize);
subplot(2, 4, 3);
imshow(greenChannel);
title('Corrected Green Channel ROI', 'FontSize', fontSize);
subplot(2, 4, 4);
imshow(blueChannel);
title('Corrected Blue Channel ROI', 'FontSize', fontSize);
% Let's compute and display the histograms of the corrected image.
[pixelCount grayLevels] = imhist(redChannel);
subplot(2, 4, 6);
bar(pixelCount);
grid on;
caption = sprintf('Histogram of Corrected Red ROI.\nMean Red = %.1f', meanR);
title(caption, 'FontSize', fontSize);
xlim([0 grayLevels(end)]); % Scale x axis manually.
% Let's compute and display the histograms.
[pixelCount grayLevels] = imhist(greenChannel);
subplot(2, 4, 7);
bar(pixelCount);
grid on;
caption = sprintf('Histogram of Corrected Green ROI.\nMean Green = %.1f', meanR);
title(caption, 'FontSize', fontSize);
xlim([0 grayLevels(end)]); % Scale x axis manually.
% Let's compute and display the histograms.
[pixelCount grayLevels] = imhist(blueChannel);
subplot(2, 4, 8);
bar(pixelCount);
grid on;
caption = sprintf('Histogram of Corrected Blue ROI.\nMean Blue = %.1f', meanR);
title(caption, 'FontSize', fontSize);
xlim([0 grayLevels(end)]); % Scale x axis manually.
% Get the means of the corrected ROI for each color channel.
meanR = mean2(redChannel);
meanG = mean2(greenChannel);
meanB = mean2(blueChannel);
correctedMean = mean([meanR, meanG, meanB])
message = sprintf('Now, the\nCorrected Red mean = %.1f\nCorrected Green mean = %.1f\nCorrected Blue mean = %.1f\n(Differences are due to clipping.)\nWe now apply it to the whole image',...
meanR, meanG, meanB);
uiwait(helpdlg(message));
% Now correct the original image.
% Extract the individual red, green, and blue color channels.
redChannel = rgbImage(:, :, 1);
greenChannel = rgbImage(:, :, 2);
blueChannel = rgbImage(:, :, 3);
% Linearly scale the full-sized color channel images
redChannelC = uint8(single(redChannel) * correctionFactorR);
greenChannelC = uint8(single(greenChannel) * correctionFactorG);
blueChannelC = uint8(single(blueChannel) * correctionFactorB);
% Recombine separate color channels into a single, true color RGB image.
correctedRGBImage = cat(3, redChannelC, greenChannelC, blueChannelC);
subplot(2, 4, 1);
imshow(correctedRGBImage);
title('Corrected Full-size Image', 'FontSize', fontSize);
message = sprintf('Done with the demo.\nPlease flicker between the two figures');
uiwait(helpdlg(message));

Matija
Matija on 19 Jun 2013
Great, thanks for the code.
But before applying this code I have to specify the area I want to define as neutral colored (white or gray)- in my case it is the white sclera.
Do you have any idea how to detect sclera?
Thresholding is fine, but not very robust...

Matija
Matija on 4 Jul 2013
Finally,
here is my plan: first detect eyes and detect iris, than apply eye-shaped mask centered on iris...this will result in sclera and some skin around eyes...than threshold to remove everything except sclera...
I think this should work, will report to you soon.

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