Book Image

Machine Learning for OpenCV

By : Michael Beyeler
Book Image

Machine Learning for OpenCV

By: Michael Beyeler

Overview of this book

Machine learning is no longer just a buzzword, it is all around us: from protecting your email, to automatically tagging friends in pictures, to predicting what movies you like. Computer vision is one of today's most exciting application fields of machine learning, with Deep Learning driving innovative systems such as self-driving cars and Google’s DeepMind. OpenCV lies at the intersection of these topics, providing a comprehensive open-source library for classic as well as state-of-the-art computer vision and machine learning algorithms. In combination with Python Anaconda, you will have access to all the open-source computing libraries you could possibly ask for. Machine learning for OpenCV begins by introducing you to the essential concepts of statistical learning, such as classification and regression. Once all the basics are covered, you will start exploring various algorithms such as decision trees, support vector machines, and Bayesian networks, and learn how to combine them with other OpenCV functionality. As the book progresses, so will your machine learning skills, until you are ready to take on today's hottest topic in the field: Deep Learning. By the end of this book, you will be ready to take on your own machine learning problems, either by building on the existing source code or developing your own algorithm from scratch!
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Understanding k-means clustering

The most essential clustering algorithm that OpenCV provides is k-means clustering, which searches for a predetermined number of k clusters (or groups) within an unlabeled multidimensional dataset.

It does so by using two simple assumptions about what an optimal clustering should look like:

  • The center of each cluster is simply the arithmetic mean of all the points belonging to the cluster
  • Each point in the cluster is closer to its own center than to other cluster centers

It's the easiest to understand the algorithm by looking at a concrete example.

Implementing our first k-means example

First, let's generate a 2D dataset containing four distinct blobs. To emphasize that this is...