Find section of an image within an image

[Gopher2011]

Big screen grab example

Little image example

Sorry for this and I really would appreciate any comments.. or help..

I am working with a home made industrial OCR recondition (but not actually OCR), and I know some of you will say 'this is better' and 'that is better' but my company's application is very precise, so this is the best way I can put it..

What I need to do - and I make the example as simple as possible here - is to get a screen grab. I then need to compare the screen grab with a stored tiny image, just showing a small image. I then need to compare the screen grab, and then if a match is found, return the x/y of the co-ordinates of the little image in the big screen grab image..

I really do hope this makes sense..

If you can help or point me in the right direction I would appreciate it.

 

[Gopher2011]

A pixel by pixel comparison takes forever, any suggestions for a quicker way? I can grab screen shots and find the data with a pixel by pixel comparison but this takes*forever*

 

[ThomasT]

If the small image will ALWAYS be an exact copy of a smaller part of the big screen capture Pixel Comparison is the best way(There are faster methods I just forgot where ) If the small Image looks like a Section of the big image but not exactly matches then you'd be better of creating a Artificial Neural Network. ANN's are used for things like OCR but they can be adapted for almost anything you can use a algorithm for. The only and i think biggest Con of a ANN is that you better gear up for some hard coding.

 

[Gopher2011]

Hi,
The image is an exact part of the big image. Im kinda screen grabbing text then searching other images to see if other web sites have stolen our images.

 

[ThomasT]

Then You can use Bitmap.lockbits. I suggest you create a C# dll That compairs the img's because in C# you can use pointers wich is faster than the vb.net Marshal.

 

[Gopher2011]

ok.. i have heard of that - and seen examples in goggle. I shall investigate!

 

[JohnH]

I suggest you create a C# dll That compairs the img's because in C# you can use pointers wich is faster than the vb.net Marshal.

Not relevant, copying all image data from unmanaged memory using Marshal class can be done in a single operation (and fast too, typically 1/3ms), from there the comparisons is the same.
Here's an explanation of Lockbits: Using the LockBits method to access image data

 

[Gopher2011]

Serin - C# Search Image with fuzzy and resizing - serinolorenzo


This guy had a small perfect working c# example that I examined and ported.
Thanks for your reply's guys.