Semi-Automatic Area Measurement of Irregular Two Dimensional Shapes in Digital Images

Abstract:

Measuring area of irregular shapes is essential for many applications in Geomatics engineering, Civil engineering, Agricultural sciences, and Medical sciences. In this era of digital images, a problem frequently encountered, when it is required to determine the area of irregular shapes such as irregular properties, contour lines, a parcel of land, drainage basins, lakes, ponds, wounds and tumors in human organs, swimming pools, and so on. This paper addresses this problem, and aims at developing a semi-automatic method that can be used as a software tool for area measurement of irregular shapes in digital images. The developed method is relatively straightforward and based on the raster image in which each spatial location has a pixel associated with it, and by definition each pixel will occupy a certain amount of area. The algorithm used in this method is based on spatial data in form of pixel coordinates. The algorithm is implemented in a computerized model developed in Microsoft Windows Visual C++6, and was equipped with Graphical User Interface (GUI) to friendly enable users to enter the required parameters. The experiment results using various sources of raster data, including satellite images, scanned map, medical images, and CAD drawings show that the developed software tool named (Area_IrreShape) is found to be effective, portable, easy to use, and accurate. However the cell size or the spatial resolution of the raster image is a key factor for the accuracy of measuring area by the developed software tool, and as such the accuracy increases as the size of the cell decreases. Finally, it can be concluded that the semi-automatic method developed in this paper is ideal for many applications for irregular or regular shapes, particularly where precise area measurement of large irregular two dimensional shapes in digital images is needed.

• Periodical: Applied Mechanics and Materials (Volumes 170-173)
• Pages: 2953-2961
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.170-173.2953
• Online since: May 2012
• Authors: Adil I. Hassabo
• Keywords:

  Found Keywords

  Digital Image

  , Area Measurement, Irregular Shapes, Pixel Coordinates, Raster Data, Semi-Automatic

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