Removing grill/grate - "horizontal stripes in background"

Posted by Kiwa on
URL: http://imagej.273.s1.nabble.com/Removing-grill-grate-horizontal-stripes-in-background-tp5009203.html

Hello All,

I am trying to process this image (as a first step for a live camera processing):
d

(I know this image is not really good, I would need to take a picture directly above the belt)

My goal is to calculate the surface of the food over the surface on the belt.
I would like to remove the background to keep only the "food" and then calculate its area !
The color doesn't matter since I basically want to calculate the surface.
Then grayscale / binary image is fine for me.


I am facing difficulties with the grill/grid in the background.
I tried several approaches :
- Grayscale + Thresholding + Bandpass filter
- Split RBG channel, Threshold min/max on each, Merge
- Edge detection
- Watershed ..

So far, the best image I got is after applying good Levels/Windows.. to the Red channel image.
Here :



Do you guys have any ideas how I could remove the horizontal lines ?

Do you think it's feasible or better to do a detection/object-tracking of the large white/colored features to get multiple ROI for each food part and then work on them separately ?

I am open to any suggestions,

Thanks a lot,
K.