Distance measurement in Image Processing

Question

I am really hoping someone can help me out, because I'm really stuck on this one. I will have a large dataset of image needing processing, which due to the size of the set can not be processed by hand.

What needs to be done is I need to find a horizontal pixel distance in a set of about 30 objects per image. The objects are all the same shape and similar color (i.e. a shade lighter/darker). The X/Y 0,0 will be assigned to the center X bottom Y borders of the lowest Y object, from there I need to measure and record the x axis distance to the center of each of the remaining 29 objects in the image. The center part isn't really necessary as I can reformulate to realign to center, and the main purpose of this isn't necessarily the x/y coordinates, but a pattern they show/have.

I have been able to utilize Photoshop, as well as Rapidminer with IMMI extension to extract the objects, however I cannot find any tools that measure the distances. I have looked at JavaCV, but didn't see anything that can accomplish that. If someone has any idea of a toolkit, Java or otherwise, please let me know!

How do I measure the distance between 2 objects I've already found?

Answer 1

ImageJ is widely used in this context. You may be able to find an existing plugin or use the extensive macro language.

Answer 2

If you have less images to measure you can use KLONK Image Measurement for Windows. Download and use the free version: http://www.imagemeasurement.com