Faster numpy cartesian to spherical coordinate conversion?

Question

I have an array of 3 million data points from a 3-axiz accellerometer (XYZ), and I want to add 3 columns to the array containing the equivalent spherical coordinates (r, theta, phi). The following code works, but seems way too slow. How can I do better?

import numpy as np
import math as m

def cart2sph(x,y,z):
    XsqPlusYsq = x**2 + y**2
    r = m.sqrt(XsqPlusYsq + z**2)               # r
    elev = m.atan2(z,m.sqrt(XsqPlusYsq))     # theta
    az = m.atan2(y,x)                           # phi
    return r, elev, az

def cart2sphA(pts):
    return np.array([cart2sph(x,y,z) for x,y,z in pts])

def appendSpherical(xyz):
    np.hstack((xyz, cart2sphA(xyz)))

Answer 1

This is similar to Justin Peel's answer, but using just numpy and taking advantage of its built-in vectorization:

import numpy as np

def appendSpherical_np(xyz):
    ptsnew = np.hstack((xyz, np.zeros(xyz.shape)))
    xy = xyz[:,0]**2 + xyz[:,1]**2
    ptsnew[:,3] = np.sqrt(xy + xyz[:,2]**2)
    ptsnew[:,4] = np.arctan2(np.sqrt(xy), xyz[:,2]) # for elevation angle defined from Z-axis down
    #ptsnew[:,4] = np.arctan2(xyz[:,2], np.sqrt(xy)) # for elevation angle defined from XY-plane up
    ptsnew[:,5] = np.arctan2(xyz[:,1], xyz[:,0])
    return ptsnew

Note that, as suggested in the comments, I've changed the definition of elevation angle from your original function. On my machine, testing with pts = np.random.rand(3000000, 3), the time went from 76 seconds to 3.3 seconds. I don't have Cython so I wasn't able to compare the timing with that solution.

Answer 2

Here's a quick Cython code that I wrote up for this:

cdef extern from "math.h":
    long double sqrt(long double xx)
    long double atan2(long double a, double b)

import numpy as np
cimport numpy as np
cimport cython

ctypedef np.float64_t DTYPE_t

@cython.boundscheck(False)
@cython.wraparound(False)
def appendSpherical(np.ndarray[DTYPE_t,ndim=2] xyz):
    cdef np.ndarray[DTYPE_t,ndim=2] pts = np.empty((xyz.shape[0],6))
    cdef long double XsqPlusYsq
    for i in xrange(xyz.shape[0]):
        pts[i,0] = xyz[i,0]
        pts[i,1] = xyz[i,1]
        pts[i,2] = xyz[i,2]
        XsqPlusYsq = xyz[i,0]**2 + xyz[i,1]**2
        pts[i,3] = sqrt(XsqPlusYsq + xyz[i,2]**2)
        pts[i,4] = atan2(xyz[i,2],sqrt(XsqPlusYsq))
        pts[i,5] = atan2(xyz[i,1],xyz[i,0])
    return pts

It took the time down from 62.4 seconds to 1.22 seconds using 3,000,000 points for me. That's not too shabby. I'm sure there are some other improvements that can be made.

Answer 3

! There is an error still in all the code above.. and this is a top Google result.. TLDR: I have tested this with VPython, using atan2 for theta (elev) is wrong, use acos! It is correct for phi (azim). I recommend the sympy1.0 acos function (it does not even complain about acos(z/r) with r = 0 ) .

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SphericalCoordinates.html

If we convert that to the physics system (r, theta, phi) = (r, elev, azimuth) we have:

r = sqrt(x*x + y*y + z*z)
phi = atan2(y,x)
theta = acos(z,r)

Non optimized but correct code for right-handed physics system:

from sympy import *
def asCartesian(rthetaphi):
    #takes list rthetaphi (single coord)
    r       = rthetaphi[0]
    theta   = rthetaphi[1]* pi/180 # to radian
    phi     = rthetaphi[2]* pi/180
    x = r * sin( theta ) * cos( phi )
    y = r * sin( theta ) * sin( phi )
    z = r * cos( theta )
    return [x,y,z]

def asSpherical(xyz):
    #takes list xyz (single coord)
    x       = xyz[0]
    y       = xyz[1]
    z       = xyz[2]
    r       =  sqrt(x*x + y*y + z*z)
    theta   =  acos(z/r)*180/ pi #to degrees
    phi     =  atan2(y,x)*180/ pi
    return [r,theta,phi]

you can test it yourself with a function like:

test = asCartesian(asSpherical([-2.13091326,-0.0058279,0.83697319]))

some other test data for some quadrants:

[[ 0.          0.          0.        ]
 [-2.13091326 -0.0058279   0.83697319]
 [ 1.82172775  1.15959835  1.09232283]
 [ 1.47554111 -0.14483833 -1.80804324]
 [-1.13940573 -1.45129967 -1.30132008]
 [ 0.33530045 -1.47780466  1.6384716 ]
 [-0.51094007  1.80408573 -2.12652707]]

I used VPython additionally to easily visualize vectors:

test   = v.arrow(pos = (0,0,0), axis = vis_ori_ALA , shaftwidth=0.05, color=v.color.red)

Answer 4

To complete the previous answers, here is a Numexpr implementation (with a possible fallback to Numpy),

import numpy as np
from numpy import arctan2, sqrt
import numexpr as ne

def cart2sph(x,y,z, ceval=ne.evaluate):
    """ x, y, z :  ndarray coordinates
        ceval: backend to use: 
              - eval :  pure Numpy
              - numexpr.evaluate:  Numexpr """
    azimuth = ceval('arctan2(y,x)')
    xy2 = ceval('x**2 + y**2')
    elevation = ceval('arctan2(z, sqrt(xy2))')
    r = eval('sqrt(xy2 + z**2)')
    return azimuth, elevation, r

For large array sizes, this allows a factor of 2 speed up compared to pure a Numpy implementation, and would be comparable to C or Cython speeds. The present numpy solution (when used with the ceval=eval argument) is also 25% faster than the appendSpherical_np function in the @mtrw answer for large array sizes,

In [1]: xyz = np.random.rand(3000000,3)
   ...: x,y,z = xyz.T
In [2]: %timeit -n 1 appendSpherical_np(xyz)
1 loops, best of 3: 397 ms per loop
In [3]: %timeit -n 1 cart2sph(x,y,z, ceval=eval)
1 loops, best of 3: 280 ms per loop
In [4]: %timeit -n 1 cart2sph(x,y,z, ceval=ne.evaluate)
1 loops, best of 3: 145 ms per loop

although for smaller sizes, appendSpherical_np is actually faster,

In [5]: xyz = np.random.rand(3000,3)
...: x,y,z = xyz.T
In [6]: %timeit -n 1 appendSpherical_np(xyz)
1 loops, best of 3: 206 µs per loop
In [7]: %timeit -n 1 cart2sph(x,y,z, ceval=eval)
1 loops, best of 3: 261 µs per loop
In [8]: %timeit -n 1 cart2sph(x,y,z, ceval=ne.evaluate)
1 loops, best of 3: 271 µs per loop