Playing Card Recognition

Timothy Pelletier
Background/Proposed Solution
-Playing Card Recognition through image
processing

-Detection of multiple cards

-Re-orient each card (Hough Transform)

-Extraction of suit/number
Fig. 1: Sample card image implemented before
program
-Display/Indication of respective qualities
Final Program Overview
Individual
Test
Initialized

Pre-processing
(grayscale/binary
conversion, edge Number/Suit Extraction
detection, bounding
boxes

Canny Filter/Hough Cross-Correlation with

Transform (Line Number/Suit database
Identification)

Peak
Identification/Store Final
Upright Image Value
Transformation

Fig. 2: Final program flow diagram

Final Display
Card Detection
-Grayscale/binary conversion
-Filter out card features using binary image; use
filtered image to determine number of cards

-Draw “bounding boxes” around each

card (only accept objects with length
greater than 10% of total image length)
-Sub-image extraction using bounding
Fig. 3 (above): Initial bounding box
layout
Fig. 4 (left): Sub-image of
individual playing card extracted

boxes
Canny Filter/Hough Transform (Edge/Line Detection)
● Canny Filter acts as edge
detector to outline playing card

● Hough transform applied to

properly derive the four major
line segments on playing card

○ Must check lines for

orthogonality with one
another

Fig. 5 (above): Individual playing card

after Canny filter (left) and with Hough
transform lines drawn on (right)
Upright Image Transformation
-Hough Transform gives lines

-Find line equations and check for

orthogonality

-Intersection points of orthogonal lines

indicate card corners Fig. 6 (above): Conversion from
extracted, angled playing card to desire,
upright format
-Projective transform aligns image

-2.5’’x3.5’’ card, use 500x700 pixel image

Extraction of Number & Suit
-Position of card rank in inches translates to
position in pixels

-Rank is on top .425’’x.575’’ corner

-85x115 corner cropped out

-Provides rank for each card

-Same process repeated for suit, different

section cropped
Fig. 7 (above): Conversion from
desired, upright position to number
“sub-sub-image”
Fast Normalized Cross-Correlation
-Created database of all isolated
ranks and suits

-Rank in question cross-correlated

with each rank in database

-Peak value determines final

quality

-Repeated with suit

**Please Note: All database values Fig. 8: Four fast normalized cross-
strictly created using Bicycle brand correlation examples. Ten is the card
in question, gives highest peak
cards
Final Display
-Code runs through each detected card
in individual image

-Stores values for each card

-Original image re-displayed with suit

and ranks of each card

Fig. 9: End result with identified card

components
Results
-Cards successfully detected and identified by program

-Final image displayed with card number and suit written on each card

-Cards detected and identified at varying angles

-Different quality photo testing still required

Application Limitations/Potential Considerations
Potential Issue Solution
Processing time is somewhat Code Suppression
inconvenient due to immense
amount of figures Additional Filtering

Overlapping playing cards as Percentage of image general

well as bounding boxes makeup
(additional lines identified)
Alternate coding methods
Derivation of slope during
parallel line pair identification
Questions?