April 1996 Programmer's Challenge

Mutant Life

Mail solutions to: progchallenge@mactech.com

Due Date: 1 May 1996

NOTE EARLIER DUE DATE

This month´s Challenge is to write a small image-processing application that scans a color image and identifies the boundaries of possible objects in that image. Applications for such a program might include image enhancement, special effects, or pattern recognition, although those applications would use a more sophisticated approach for detecting edges than we will be implementing for this Challenge.

The prototype for the code you should write is:

typedef enum {
  redOnly=1, greenOnly, redAndGreen, blueOnly,
  redAndBlue, greenAndBlue, redGreenAndBlue
} EdgeType;
void EdgeDetect(
  PixMapHandle pMapH,       /* find edges in this PixMap */
  BitMap *bMap,             /* store edges in this BitMap */
  unsigned short threshold, /* color separations >= dist create an edge */
  EdgeType eType            /* which color components to look at */
);

Each pixel in the PixMap should be compared to the eight (or fewer) adjacent pixels differing in position by up to one row or column. If the pixel color is sufficiently different (as defined below) from any of the adjacent pixels, then the bit in the BitMap corresponding to that pixel should be set to 1. Otherwise, the BitMap bit should be set to 0. Obviously, pixels located in the first and last row and column will have fewer than eight adjacent pixels.

Whether two pixels differ by enough to constitute an edge is determined by comparing their rgb values. The distance between two pixels is the root-mean-square difference between the color components of their rgb values, considering only those components specified in the input EdgeType. For example, if the EdgeType is greenOnly, then the distance between two pixels is the absolute value of the difference in the green components of their colors. If the EdgeType is redGreenAndBlue, then the distance is the square root of the sum of the squares of the differences of the red components, the green components, and the blue components.

As a specific example, suppose we have two pixels with (red, green, blue) values of (0x1000, 0x2000, 0x4000) and (0x2000, 0x5000, 0xB000). The distance between these two pixels is:

  redOnly:          0x1000
  redAndGreen:      0x3298=sqrt(0x01000000+0x09000000)
  redGreenAndBlue:  0x7AE5=sqrt(0x01000000+0x09000000+0x31000000)
 

Two pixels define an edge if their distance is greater than or equal to the threshold parameter. The threshold parameter is deliberately declared to be an unsigned short, even though pixels can differ by a greater amount. Since the definition of distance is symmetric, the bits corresponding to both edge pixels would be set in the BitMap.

The BitMap will be allocated and initialized for you by the calling routine. The storage pointed to by the BitMap baseAddr will also be allocated and initialized to zero. The bounds rectangles will be the same for the BitMap and the PixMap. Your code needs to deal with pixelSize values of 8, 16, or 32, with each case being equally weighted in the scoring. For PixMaps with indexed pixels, you will obviously need to look at the color table to find the rgb value corresponding to a given index. In the 16-bit case, you should follow the rules for converting a 5-bit color component into an 8-bit RGBColor component value (i.e., replicating the 3 most significant bits and appending them to constitute the least significant bits of the 8-bit component).

This will be a native PowerPC Challenge, scored using the latest Metrowerks C compiler. (No C++ or Pascal this month.)

Entries Due Ten Days Earlier

Although two issues may seem like a long time to wait for the results of the Challenge, it has always been a challenge (no pun intended) to complete the scoring of results in time for publication two issues later. We have been searching for a way to allow a little more time for evaluating the entries and writing the column without introducing any additional delay between publication of the problem and publication of the solution. The Challenge mailing list has allowed us to deliver the Challenge to readers on a predictable schedule wherever they live, regardless of variations in mailing dates. We are going to use the mailing list to advance the due date for Challenge solutions, without reducing the amount of time available for solving the Challenge. Starting with this month�s contest, Challenge entries will be due earlier, on the 1st of the month printed on the front cover. We will mail the problem to the mailing list on the 12th of the preceding month, also about ten days earlier than before.

If you are not already a member of the Challenge mailing list, you can join the ~300 subscribers from 25 countries already on the list by sending email to macjordomo@listmail.xplain.com with the line �sub challenge-A YourName�in the body.

Last modified by Bob Boonstra on 4/13/96.