Patrick asked for an example on how to compute distances between objects based on resolution information stored in a file. The TIFF format
is one that can store resolution information, and the imfinfo function can tell you about it.

Let's look at a simple example:

url = 'https://blogs.mathworks.com/images/steve/122/blobs.tif';
bw = imread(url);
imshow(bw)

Here's the output of imfinfo:

info = imfinfo(url)

info = 

                     Filename: 'C:\TEMP\tp281629'
                  FileModDate: '06-Mar-2007 09:28:16'
                     FileSize: 2176
                       Format: 'tif'
                FormatVersion: []
                        Width: 308
                       Height: 242
                     BitDepth: 1
                    ColorType: 'grayscale'
              FormatSignature: [73 73 42 0]
                    ByteOrder: 'little-endian'
               NewSubFileType: 0
                BitsPerSample: 1
                  Compression: 'CCITT 1D'
    PhotometricInterpretation: 'WhiteIsZero'
                 StripOffsets: [10x1 double]
              SamplesPerPixel: 1
                 RowsPerStrip: 26
              StripByteCounts: [10x1 double]
                  XResolution: 100
                  YResolution: 100
               ResolutionUnit: 'Inch'
                     Colormap: []
          PlanarConfiguration: 'Chunky'
                    TileWidth: []
                   TileLength: []
                  TileOffsets: []
               TileByteCounts: []
                  Orientation: 1
                    FillOrder: 1
             GrayResponseUnit: 0.0100
               MaxSampleValue: 1
               MinSampleValue: 0
                 Thresholding: 1

Notice the XResolution and YResolution fields, as well as the ResolutionUnit field. According to the TIFF specification, the XResolution and YResolution fields are the number of pixels per resolution unit.

info.XResolution

ans =

   100

info.YResolution

ans =

   100

info.ResolutionUnit

ans =

Inch

Now let's use bwlabel and regionprops to compute the centroids of the objects.

L = bwlabel(bw);
s = regionprops(L, 'Centroid')

s = 

4x1 struct array with fields:
    Centroid

Compute the distance (in pixel units) between the first two objects.

delta_x = s(1).Centroid(1) - s(2).Centroid(1);
delta_y = s(1).Centroid(2) - s(2).Centroid(2);
pixel_distance = hypot(delta_x, delta_y)

pixel_distance =

  103.6742

Finally, use the resolution information from the file to convert to physical distance. (Note: this calculation assumes that
the horizontal and vertical resolutions are the same.)

physical_distance = pixel_distance / info.XResolution

physical_distance =

    1.0367

Get the MATLAB code

Published with MATLAB® 7.4