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CHAPTER 4
4. METHODS FOR MEASURING DISTANCE IN IMAGES
4.1. INTRODUCTION
In image analysis, the distance transform measures the distance of each object point
from the nearest boundary and is an important tool in computer vision, image processing and
pattern recognition. In the distance transform, binary image specifies the distance from each
pixel to the nearest non-zero pixel. The euclidean distance is the straight-line distance
between two pixels and is evaluated using the euclidean norm. The city block distance metric
measures the path between the pixels based on a four connected neighbourhood and pixels
whose edges touch are one unit apart and pixels diagonally touching are two units apart.

The chessboard distance metric measures the path between the pixels based on an
eight connected neighbourhood. The quasi-euclidean metric measures are the total euclidean
distance along a set of horizontal, vertical, and diagonal line segments. A central problem in
image recognition and computer vision is determining the distance between images and
efforts which have been made to define image distances to provide intuitively reasonable
results. Estimating distances in digital image is useful in different shape representation and
shape recognition tasks [Borgefors 1994].

4.2. DISTANCE METRICS

The distance transform provides a metric or measure of the separation of points in the
image. The bwdist function calculates the distance between each pixel and the nearest
nonzero pixel for binary images. The bwdist function supports several distance metrics listed
in table 4.1.

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Table 4.1 various distance metrics

Distance
Metric
Euclidean

Description

Illustration

The Euclidean distance is the

straight-line distance between two

0 0 0

1.41 1.0 1.41

0 1 0

1.0

0 0 0

1.41 1.0 1.41

Image

Distance Transform

pixels.

City Block

The city block distance metric

0.0

1.0

1 0 0

pixels based on a 4-connected

0 1 0

neighborhood. Pixels whose edges

0 0 0

measures the path between the

touch are 1 unit apart and pixels

Distance
Transform

Image

diagonally touching are 2 units

apart.
Chessboard The chessboard distance metric
measures the path between the

1 0 0

pixels based on an 8-connected

0 1 0

neighborhood. Pixels whose edges

0 0 0

or corners touch are 1 unit apart.

Quasi-

The

quasi-Euclidean

Euclidean

measures

Image

metric
0 0 0 0 0

2.8 2.2 2.0 2.2 2.8

distance along a set of horizontal,

0 0 0 0 0

2.2 1.4 1.0 1.4 2.2

vertical and diagonal line segments.

0 0 1 0 0

2.0 1.0

0 0 0 0 0

2.2 1.4 1.0 1.4 2.2

0 0 0 0 0

2.8 2.2 2.0 2.2 2.8

the

total

Euclidean

Image

Chamfer
distance

Distance
Transform

The chamfer distance dM between 2

points A and B is the minimum of
the associated costs to all the paths

c2 c1 c2
c1 0 c1
c2 c1 c2

1.0 2.0

Distance Transform

c2 c1 c2
c1 0

0 c1
c2 c1 c2

Parallel, forward & backward chamfer

starting from A to B

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4.3. EUCLIDEAN DISTANCE

4.3.1. Euclidean distance
The euclidean distance is the distance between two points in euclidean space. The two
points P and Q in two dimensional euclidean spaces and P with the coordinates (p1, p2), Q
with the coordinates (q1, q2). The line segment with the endpoints of P and Q will form the
hypotenuse of a right angled triangle. The distance between two points p and q is defined as
the square root of the sum of the squares of the differences between the corresponding
coordinates of the points. The two-dimensional euclidean geometry, the euclidean distance
between two points a = (ax, ay) and b = (bx, by) is defined as :

,   
   by
 

4.3.2. Euclidean distance algorithm

Euclidean distance algorithm computes the minimum distance between a column
vector x and a collection of column vectors in the code book matrix cb. The algorithm
computes the minimum distance to x and finds the column vector in cb that is closest to x.
Figure 4.1 shows Euclidean distance algorithm.

,   |
|

1
1   2
2    n
n 


 i
i 


In one dimension, the distance between two points, x1 and x2, on a line is simply the
absolute value of the difference between the two points as:

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2
1   |2
1 |
In two dimensions, the distance between P = (p1, p2) and q = (q1, q2) as:
1
1   2
2 
Step1: load the column vector x;
Step2: load the code book;
Step3: minimum distance is initially set to the first element of cb.
Step4: i.e. set idx=1;
Step5: compute distance by normalized values of (x-cb) for all cb;
Step6: if d is less than distance set distance is equal to d;
Step7: set idx=index;
Step8: end
Figure 4.1 Euclidean distance algorithm

4.3.3. Euclidean function

The input source data is a feature class; it will first be converted internally to a raster
before the euclidean analysis is performed. The resolution will be smaller of the height or
width of the extent of the feature class, divided by 250 and the resolution can be set with the
output cell size parameter. Figure 4.2 shows how euclidean function works.

Figure 4.2 Euclidean function

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The euclidean distance is calculated from the center of the source cells to the center of
each of the surrounding cells and true distance is calculated to each cell in the distance
functions. The euclidean algorithm works as follows: for each cell, the distance is calculated
to each source cell by calculating the hypotenuse, with the x-max and y-max. Figure 4.3
shows sample sonographic image of appendicitis.

Figure 4.3 Sonographic image of Appendicitis

Figure 4.4 Euclidean Distance Measure

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The shortest distance to a source is determined if it is less than the specified

maximum distance and the value is assigned to the cell location on the output raster. The
output values for the euclidean distance raster are floating-point distance values and the cell
is at an equal distance to two or more sources, which assigned to the source as encountered
first in the scanning process. The euclidean distance raster tells how close each cell is to the
nearest source and raster defines which source zone and cell value is the closest. The
euclidean direction identifies the direction to the closest source cell [Esri, 2007]. Figure 4.4
shows euclidean distance measure.

4.3.4. Image and Euclidean Distance

M X N images can be easily discussed in an MN dimensional euclidean space, called
image space. It is natural to adopt the base e1, e2 ,.., eMN to form a coordinate system of
the image space, where ekN+

corresponds to an ideal point source with unit intensity at

location (k, l). Thus an image x = (x1, x2 ,., xMN ) , where xkN+l is the gray level at the
(k, l)th pixel, is represented as a point in the image space, and xkN+l with respect to ekN+ l . The
origin of the image space is an image whose gray levels are zero everywhere
[Liwei Wang et al., 2005].

Although the algebra of the image space can be easily formulated as above, the
euclidean distance of images could not be determined until the metric coefficients of the basis
are given. The metric coefficients gij i, j =1, 2,..,MN , are defined as

where <, > is the scalar product, and ij is the angle between ei and ej . Note that, if
< ei ei > = < ej ej> =, i.e. all the base vectors have the same length, then gij depends

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completely on the angle ij. Given the metric coefficients, the euclidean distance of two
images x, y is written by

where the symmetric matrix G = (gij)MNxMN will be referred to as metric matrix.

For images of fixed size M by N , every MNth order and positive definite matrix G
induces a euclidean distance. But most of them are not appropriate for measuring image
distances. For example, suppose any two base vectors ei ,ej (i j) , no matter which pixels
they correspond to are mutually perpendicular, the basis then forms a Cartesian coordinate
system. Accordingly, G is the identity matrix, and it induces the traditional euclidean distance
given by

Geometrically, this defect is due to the orthogonality of the base vectors e1, e2
,..,eMN which correspond to pixels. Clearly, the information about the spatial relationship,
i.e. the distances between the pixels, cannot be reflected by all mutually perpendicular base
vectors. Such information, however, often appears in intuitive image distance as in the
following statement: A slightly deformed image is very similar to the original one. Here,
slightly deformed means that pixels in the deformed image are close to the corresponding
pixels in the original image. This implies that a good euclidean distance for images should
contain the information of pixel distances. Accordingly, the metric coefficients, which define
the euclidean distance, have to be related to the pixel distances.

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If the metric coefficients depend properly on the pixel distances, the obtained
euclidean distance is insensitive to small deformation. The two distances that are considered
are: one is the image distance measured in the high dimensional image space, the other is the
pixel distance. Let PiPj , i, j = 1, 2,.., MN , be pixels. The pixel distance, written as
| Pi Pj |, is the distance between Pi and Pj on the image lattice. For example, if Pi is at
location (k, l), and Pj is at (k, l) , | Pi Pj | may be

. Let euclidean

distance, set ij = /2 . Then gij = cos ij = 0 hence

thus obtained euclidean distance is

4.4. CHAMFER DISTANCE

The chamfer distance relatively well approximates the euclidean distance and is
widely used because of its relatively small computational requirements as it imposes only
2 scans of the n-dimensional image independently of the dimension of the image. The
chamfer distances are widely used in image analysis of the euclidean distance with integers
[Eric Remy et al., 2000]. The chamfer distance dM between 2 points A and B is the
minimum of the associated costs to all the paths PAB from A to B :

Chamfer distance was first proposed an evaluation of two dimensional asymmetric

distance between two set of edge points. Given a template T positioned at location x in an

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image I and a binary edge map E of the image I, the basic form of chamfer distance is
calculated as

where || . ||2 is l2 norm and |T| denotes number of points in template T. Chamfer
distance can be efficiently computed as:

where DTE is a distance transform defined for every image point x I as

Meanwhile, in practice, distance transform is truncated to a constant

Chamfer distances are used for computing geodesic diameters to propagate chamfer
distances from a binary image, constrained to another binary image.

Figure 4.5 Chamfer Distance [Muhammad Akmal et al., 1998]

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The chamfer distance transformations rely on the assumption that it is possible to

deduce the value of the distance at a pixel from the value of the distance at its neighbours.
They offer a good approximation to the desired euclidean distance transform which is
computationally very intensive [Shengwen Guo et al., 2009].

Chamfer distance algorithms are a class of discrete algorithms that offer a good
approximation and euclidean distance transform at a lower computational cost. The distance
approximates the global distance computation with repeated propagation of local distances
within a small neighborhood mask. The approximation error depends upon the size of the
neighborhood and the selection of the local distances [Muhammad Akmal et al., 1998].
Figure 4.5 shows the sample chamfer distance.

Figure 4.6 Euclidean and chamfer distances on appendicitis image

Chamfer distances are local distances which permit to deduce a distance from the
distances of close neighbours unlike dE. The computation of the medial axis is done by a local
test and all computations are done by using integer numbers and linear operations such as +, and <. Figure 4.6 shows euclidean and chamfer distances on appendicitis image.

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4.5. GEODESIC DISTANCE

Geodesics are locally shortest paths in the sense that any perturbation of a geodesic
curve will increase the length. The minimal length path between two points on the surface is
the minimal geodesics connecting those points. Geodesics minimize the euclidean distance
on a surface and a geodesic distance between two vertices of a triangle mesh surface, for
instance is computed using a shortest path algorithm on the mesh graph, where the weight
associated with an edge is its length.

The geodesic distances on a three dimensional surface, is important in many fields of

computer graphics and geometric modeling. Normally, geodesic paths on a surface are
critical in surface segmentation and editing methods since cutting the surface along the
geodesic paths produces better results and minimum distortion parameterization or remeshing
of 3D models are based on the knowledge of geodesic distances . The applications include
isometry-invariant shape classification, skinning, medical imaging and geophysics
[Katz et al., 2003]. Figure 4.7 shows difference between euclidean distance and geodesic
distance on a circle.

Figure 4.7 Euclidean and geodesic distances on a circle [Balu et al., 2012]

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Geodesic has shortest paths, and perturbation of a geodesic curve will increase its
length. A geodesic distance between two vertices of a triangle mesh surface can be computed
using a shortest path algorithm on the mesh graph with an edge is its length. The Dijkstras
algorithm can lengths of paths very quickly, but produce paths quite different from true
geodesics and the paths created pass only through the mesh vertices. The research on
geodesic computation on a surface focuses on solving the eikonal equation. Kimmel and
Sethian proposed an optimal time algorithm for computing the geodesic distances and
extracting shortest paths on triangulated manifolds using the fast marching method
[Sifri et al., 2003].

Figure 4.8 Euclidean and geodesic distances on an appendicitis image

In figure 4.8, white lines are represent euclidean distance and blue line represents
geodesic distances on an appendicitis image. Mitchell et al (1987) presented an algorithm for
determining the shortest path between a source and a destination on an arbitrary polyhedral
surface, and seeking to approximate distance maps on a parametric surface and the eikonal
equation on a discrete grid obtained by sampling the parametric domain. Elad et al., (2003)
presented an efficient O(n) numerical algorithm for first-order approximation of geodesic
distances on parametric surfaces, where n is the number of points on the surface.

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4.5.1. Geodesic distance from a binary region on an image

Let I(x) :
Rd be an image (d = 3 for a color image), whose support R2 is

assumed to be continuous. Given a binary mask M (with M(x) {0, 1}, x ) associated

to a seed region (or object region)

= x : M(x) = 0}, the unsigned geodesic

distance transform D0 (. ; M, I) assigns to each pixel x its geodesic distance from defined
as :

Where Pa,b is the set of all possible differentiable paths in between the points a and

b and (s) : R
R2 indicates a path, parametrized by its arc length s [0, l()]. The spatial
derivative ` (s) = (s) / s is the unit vector tangent to the direction of the path. The dot-

product is ensuring the maximum influence for the gradient I when it is parallel to the

direction of the path . The geodesic factor weighs the contribution of the image gradient
versus the spatial distances. Figure 4.9 shows the difference between euclidean distance and
geodesic distance.

Figure 4.9 Euclidean Distance vs Geodesic Distance [Hilaga et al., 2001]

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4.6. MANHATTAN DISTANCE

The distance between two points in a grid is based on a strictly horizontal and/or
vertical path as opposed to the diagonal. The manhattan distance is the simple sum of the
horizontal and vertical components, whereas the diagonal distance might be computed by
applying the Pythagorean Theorem [Wikipedia, 2010]. It is also called the L1 distance and of
u = (x1 , y1) and v = (x2 , y2) are two points, then the manhattan distance between u and v is
given by

------------------------------------------------ (1)
Instead of two dimensions, if the points have n-dimensions, such as a = (x1 , x2 ,..., xn)
and b = (y1 , y2 ,..., yn) then, equation (1) can be generalized by defining the manhattan
distance between a and b as

Figure 4.10 Euclidean and Manhattan distances on a appendicitis image

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Figure 4.10 shows euclidean and manhattan distances on an appendicitis image. The
yellow lines are representing euclidean and green lines are representing manhattan distance.
The Manhattan distance function computes the distance that would be travelled from one data
point to the other if a grid-like path is followed and manhattan distance between two items is
the sum of the differences of their corresponding components.

Figure 4.11 shows the

difference between euclidean distance and manhattan distance.



  | 
 |


Figure 4.11 Euclidean distance vs manhattan distance [Balu et al., 2012]

4.7. CITY BLOCK DISTANCE

The city block distance is always greater than or equal to zero. The measurement
would be zero for identical points and high for points that show little similarity. The cityblock distance measuring horizontal and vertical directions and the chessboard distance takes
diagonal directions. The chamfer distance is faster than the city-block distance and cityblock distance largely over estimates distances towards 45 directions. This makes the needed
rectangular area around the moving object for the city-block distance than the chamfer
distance [Theo E. Schouten et al., 2005].

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4.7.1. The City Block Distance Transform

Consider a black and white n x n binary image: i.e. a two dimensional array where aij =
0 or 1, for i, j = 0, 1, 2, n -1. The index i stands for the row and the index j for column and
pixel (0, 0) is the upper left point in the image. The city block distance transform is to find for
each point (i , j ) its city block distance from the set of all black pixels B = { ( i, j) : aij = 1}.
In other words, authors compute the array

The city block distance transform is a basic operation in computer vision, pattern
recognition and robotics. For instance, if the black pixels represent obstacles, then dij tells us
how far the point (i, j) is from these obstacles. This information is useful when one tries to
move a robot in the free space hit pixels of the image and to keep it away from the obstacles.
Many algorithms have been proposed for computing the distance transform using different
distance metrics. Figure 4.12 shows difference between euclidean distance and city block
distance.

Figure 4.12 Euclidean distance vs city block distance [Sarah et al., 1999]

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4.8. CHESS BOARD DISTANCE

The chessboard distance is a metric defined on a vector space where the distance
between two vectors is the greatest of their differences along any coordinate dimension. In
two dimensions, i.e. plane geometry, if the points P and Q have Cartesian coordinates (x1, y1)
and (x2, y2), their chessboard distance is:
DChess = max ( | x2 x1| , | y2 y1| )
Figure 4.13 shows difference between euclidean distance and chess board distance.
Danielsson (1980) asserted that both manhattan and chessboard distance are rarely used. The
recent publication of a few transforms use manhattan distance in particular, due to the speed
of calculation but result in a coarse solution. Figure 4.14 shows difference between euclidean
distance and chess board distance matrix.

Figure 4.13 Euclidean Distance vs Chess Board Distance [Sarah et al., 1999]

Figure 4.14 Euclidean Distance vs Chess Board Distance Matrix [Antoni Moore, 2002]

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4.9. SUMMARY
The relationship and understanding among different distance measures is helpful in
choosing a proper measure for a particular application. Various distance measures, euclidean
distance, chamfer, geodesic, manhattan, city block and chess board distance are described in
detail. This chapter highlighted euclidean distance, how it is useful and described chamfer
distance as available from literature. In addition, this chapter illustrated the difference
between geodesic and euclidean distance and also demonstrated differences between
manhattan and euclidean distance, euclidean and city block distance.

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