Numpy matrix binarization using only one expression

Question:

I am looking for a way to binarize numpy N-d array based on the threshold using only one expression. So I have something like this:

np.random.seed(0)
np.set_printoptions(precision=3)
a = np.random.rand(4, 4)
threshold, upper, lower = 0.5, 1, 0

a is now:

array([[ 0.02 ,  0.833,  0.778,  0.87 ],
       [ 0.979,  0.799,  0.461,  0.781],
       [ 0.118,  0.64 ,  0.143,  0.945],
       [ 0.522,  0.415,  0.265,  0.774]])

Now I can fire these 2 expressions:

a[a>threshold] = upper
a[a<=threshold] = lower

and achieve what I want:

array([[ 0.,  1.,  1.,  1.],
       [ 1.,  1.,  0.,  1.],
       [ 0.,  1.,  0.,  1.],
       [ 1.,  0.,  0.,  1.]])

But is there a way to do this with just one expression?

Asked By: Salvador Dali

||

Answers:

We may consider np.where:

np.where(a>threshold, upper, lower)
Out[6]: 
array([[0, 1, 1, 1],
       [1, 1, 0, 1],
       [0, 1, 0, 1],
       [1, 0, 0, 1]])
Answered By: CT Zhu

You can write expression directly, this will return a boolean array, and it can be used simply as an 1-byte unsigned integer (“uint8”) array for further calculations:

print a > 0.5

output

[[False  True  True  True]
 [ True  True False  True]
 [False  True False  True]
 [ True False False  True]]

In one line and with custom upper/lower values you can write so for example:

upper = 10
lower = 3
treshold = 0.5

print lower + (a>treshold) * (upper-lower)
Answered By: Mikhail V

Numpy treats every 1d array as a vector, 2d array as sequence of vectors (matrix) and 3d+ array as a generic tensor. This means when we perform operations, we are performing vector math. So you can just do:

>>> a = (a > 0.5).astype(np.int_)

For example:

>>> np.random.seed(0)
>>> np.set_printoptions(precision=3)

>>> a = np.random.rand(4, 4)

>>> a
>>> array([[ 0.549,  0.715,  0.603,  0.545],
       [ 0.424,  0.646,  0.438,  0.892],
       [ 0.964,  0.383,  0.792,  0.529],
       [ 0.568,  0.926,  0.071,  0.087]])

>>> a = (a > 0.5).astype(np.int_)  # Where the numpy magic happens.

>>> array([[1, 1, 1, 1],
           [0, 1, 0, 1],
           [1, 0, 1, 1],
           [1, 1, 0, 0]])

Whats going on here is that you are automatically iterating through every element of every row in the 4×4 matrix and applying a boolean comparison to each element.

If > 0.5 return True, else return False.

Then by calling the .astype method and passing np.int_ as the argument, you’re telling numpy to replace all boolean values with their integer representation, in effect binarizing the matrix based on your comparison value.

Answered By: PaulG

A shorter method is to simply multiply the boolean matrix from the condition by 1 or 1.0, depending on the type you want.

>>> a = np.random.rand(4,4)
>>> a
array([[ 0.63227032,  0.18262573,  0.21241511,  0.95181594],
       [ 0.79215808,  0.63868395,  0.41706148,  0.9153959 ],
       [ 0.41812268,  0.70905987,  0.54946947,  0.51690887],
       [ 0.83693151,  0.10929998,  0.19219377,  0.82919761]])
>>> (a>0.5)*1
array([[1, 0, 0, 1],
       [1, 1, 0, 1],
       [0, 1, 1, 1],
       [1, 0, 0, 1]])
>>> (a>0.5)*1.0
array([[ 1.,  0.,  0.,  1.],
       [ 1.,  1.,  0.,  1.],
       [ 0.,  1.,  1.,  1.],
       [ 1.,  0.,  0.,  1.]])
Answered By: Doug7
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