phenotypic.enhance.SobelFilter#

class phenotypic.enhance.SobelFilter(*args, **kwargs)[source]

Bases: ImageEnhancer

Highlight colony edges in detect_mat using the Sobel gradient operator.

Computes the gradient magnitude to emphasize intensity transitions at colony boundaries. The output is an edge-strength map, not a corrected image — useful as a preprocessing step before watershed seeds or contour-based detectors.

Returns:

Input image with detect_mat set to gradient magnitude. rgb and gray are unchanged.

Return type:

Image

Best For:

  • Pre-filtering before watershed or contour-based detection.

  • Separating touching colonies when combined with marker-based segmentation.

  • Visualizing colony boundary sharpness for quality assessment.

Consider Also:

  • UnsharpMask when you want to sharpen edges without converting to a pure edge map.

  • LaplaceEnhancer for second-derivative edge detection that responds to ridges and valleys.

See also

What Enhancement Actually Does for how edge enhancement fits into the pipeline model.

Methods

__init__

apply

Applies the operation to an image, either in-place or on a copy.

widget

Return (and optionally display) the root widget.
__del__()

Automatically stop tracemalloc when the object is deleted.

__getstate__()

Prepare the object for pickling by disposing of any widgets.

This ensures that UI components (which may contain unpickleable objects like input functions or thread locks) are cleaned up before serialization.

Note

This method modifies the object state by calling dispose_widgets(). Any active widgets will be detached from the object.

apply(image, inplace=False)

Applies the operation to an image, either in-place or on a copy.

Parameters:

  • image (Image) – The arr image to apply the operation on.

  • inplace (bool) – If True, modifies the image in place; otherwise, operates on a copy of the image.

Returns:

The modified image after applying the operation.

Return type:

Image

widget(image: Image | None = None, show: bool = False) → Widget

Return (and optionally display) the root widget.

Parameters:

  • image (Image | None) – Optional image to visualize. If provided, visualization controls will be added to the widget.

  • show (bool) – Whether to display the widget immediately. Defaults to False.

Returns:

The root widget.

Return type:

ipywidgets.Widget

Raises:

ImportError – If ipywidgets or IPython are not installed.

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