NAME

Imager::Search - Find images within other images

SYNOPSIS

  use Imager::Search ();
  
  # Load the pattern to search for
  my $pattern = Imager::Search::Pattern->new(
      driver => 'Imager::Search::Driver::HTML24',
      file   => 'pattern.bmp',
  );
  
  # Load the image to search in
  my $image = Imager::Search::Image->new(
      driver => 'Imager::Search::Driver::HTML24',
      file   => 'target.bmp',
  );
  
  # Execute the search
  my @matches = $image->find( $pattern );
  print "Found " . scalar(@matches) . " matches\n";

DESCRIPTION

The regular expression engine provided with Perl has demonstrated itself to be both fully featured and extremely fast for tasks involving searching for patterns within a string.

The CPAN module Imager has demonstrated robust functionality and excellent speed across all common operating system platforms for tasks involving working with images.

The goal of Imager::Search takes the best features from Imager and the regular expression engine and combines them to produce a simple pure perl image recognition engine for systems in which the images are pixel perfect.

And equally importantly, Imager::Search does it very very fast.

Benchmarking a simple program that continuously monitors a 1024x768 display for a single target image on a cheap 1.5Ghtz Windows machine demonstrated a monitoring rate of 5 frames per second using the default BMP24 driver.

That is, 0.2 seconds to capture the screenshot, convert it into a searchable string, generate a search regexp, execute the regexp and then convert the results into match objects.

Finally, Imager::Search itself is pure Perl, and should work quite simply on any platform that the Imager module supports, which at time of writing includes Windows, Mac OS X and most other forms of Unix.

Use Cases

the Imager::Search manpage is intended to be useful for a range of tasks involving images from computing systems and the digital world in general.

The range of potential applications include monitoring screenshots from kiosk and advertising systems for evidence of crashes or embarrasing popup messages, automating interactions with graphics-intense desktop or website applications that would be otherwise intractable for traditional automation methods, and simple text recognition in systems with fonts that register to fixed pixel patterns.

For example, by storing captured image fragments of a sample set of playing cards, a program might conceptually be able to look at a solitaire-type game and establish the position and identity of all the cards on the screen, populating a model of the current game state and then allowing the automation of the playing of the game.

the Imager::Search manpage is NOT intended to be useful for tasks such as facial recognition or any other tasks involving real world images.

Methodology

Regular expressions are domain-specific Non-Finite Automata (NFA) programs designed to detect patterns within strings.

Given the problem of locating a smaller ``search image'' one or more times inside a larger ``target image'', we compile the target image into a suitable string and compile the search image into a suitable regular expression.

By executing the search regular expression on the target string, and translating the results of the run back into image terms, we can determine the specific location of all instances of the search image inside the target image with relative ease.

By decomposing the image recognition task into a regular expression task, the problem then becomes how to define a series of transforms that can generate a suitable search expression, generate a suitable target string, and derive the match locations in pixel terms from match locations in character/byte terms.

The Driver API

While it is fairly easy to conceive of what a potential solution might look like, implementing any solution is complicated by the need for all the code surrounding the regular expression execution to be fast as well.

For example, a 0.01 second regular expression search time is of no value if compiling the search and target images takes several seconds.

It may also be viable to achieve a shorter total processing time by storing the target image in a format which is inherently searchable (such as Windows BMP) and using slower and more complex search expression.

Different implementations may be superior in cases where compiled search expressions are cached and applied to many target images, versus cases where compiled target images are cached and search over by many search expressions.

the Imager::Search manpage responds to this ambiguity by not imposing a single solution, but instead defining a driver API for the transforms, so that a number of different implementations can be used with the same API in various situations.

The HTML24 Driver

A default ``HTML24'' implementation is provided with the module. This is a reference driver that encodes each pixel as a 24-bit HTML ``#RRGGBB'' colour code.

This driver demonstrates fast search times and a simple match resolution, but has an extremely slow method for generating the target images (as slow as 10 gigacyles for a typical 1024x768 pixel screenshot).

Faster drivers are currently being pursued.

USAGE

This new second-generation incarnation of the Imager::Search manpage is still in flux, so while the API for the individual classes are relatively stable, there is not yet a top level convenience API in the Imager::Search namespace itself, and the driver API is still being substantially changed in response to the differing needs of different styles of driver.

However a typical (if verbose) usage can be demonstrated, that should continue to work for a while...

1. Load the Search Image

  # An image loaded from a file
  use Imager::Search::Image ();
  my $image = Imager::Search::Image->new(
      driver => 'Imager::Search::Driver::HTML24',
      file   => 'target.bmp',
  );
  
  # An image captured from a screenshot
  use Imager::Search::Screenshot ();
  my $screen = Imager::Search::Screenshot->new(
      driver => 'Imager::Search::Driver::HTML24',
  );

2. Load the Search Pattern

  # A pattern loaded from a file
  use Imager::Search::Pattern ();
  my $pattern = Imager::Search::Pattern->new(
      driver => 'Imager::Search::Driver::HTML24',
      file   => 'pattern.bmp',
  );

3. Execute the Search

  # Find the first match
  my $first = $image->find_first( $pattern );
  
  # Find all matches
  my @matches = $image->find( $pattern );

CLASSES

The following is the complete list of classes provided by the main Imager-Search distribution.

SUPPORT

No support is available for this module.

However, bug reports may be filed at the following URI.

http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html

AUTHOR

Adam Kennedy <adamk@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.

Imager::Search - Find images within other images