I have several sets of images with a typical image being:
and from each image, I would like to extract the top and bottom curves of the object, shown in red here:
What are some possible tools I could use to solve this problem?
Some things I've looked in to:
Edge detection
As seen in the pictures, there are more edges in the image than just the two edges I'm interested in. I've implemented some naive edge detection in Python with scipy, however, this approach returns a lot of edges I don't want and the data is noisy. If I were able to clean up the data, is there a way to automatically select the edges I'm interested in (the red lines in the picture above) from the whole set of edges?
Background Subtraction
The image sets are actually taken from a video of the object moving over time. Using background subtraction, I'm able to create images like this:
But since the object is fixed on the upper-left end, there is little movement and this approach doesn't provide enough data in that region to create a complete line. Additionally, some sets have very little movement anywhere in the image so this approach wouldn't register the object in these cases.
Possibility of using computer vision: An approach that I haven't looked into is implementing some form of computer vision. I see examples of object detection where a bounding box for an object is created. However, I would like to extract specific curves.
Any feedback or help pointing me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
