CHANGELOG.md

1.1.0 April 2026

• Highlights

  • support for ROS (bag files & streams) and PyTorch
  • major rework across code, documentation, unit tests, and CI
  • type hinting throughout and broad cleanup of lint/suppression issues
  • extensive API and naming consistency work, including deprecation standardization
  • massive use of CoPilot

• Added

  • image sources
    • ROSBag reads images and point clouds from ROS 1/2 bag files
    • ROSTopic reads images and point clouds from live ROS 1/2 systems via rosbridge
    • ImageSequence: a sequence of image objects
    • PointCloudSequence: a sequence of point cloud objects
    • TensorStack: reads images from a batch tensor
    • LabelMeReader: returns image and shape data from a LabelMe JSON file
  • CLI tools
    • bagtool: animate images or point clouds from a ROS 1/2 bag file
    • ocrtool: write OCR text to stdout or JSON
  • documentation
    • ecosystem diagram
    • new Sphinx sections for ROS, PyTorch, NumPy integration, and Jupyter
    • code copy button for examples (strips >>> prompts)

• Changed

  • CI and packaging
    • changed master branch to main
    • reworked and renamed CI files
    • replaced flake8 with ruff
    • added extras: jupyter, pytorch, ros, ocr
    • added all extra to install all optional extras
    • consolidated documentation and notebooks into docs
  • code quality
    • tested with Python 3.13
    • improved behaviour when Open3D is unavailable
    • many more unit tests, with average coverage now > 50%
    • consistent and PEP-conformant repr() and str() formatting
    • more consistent handling of lazy imports
    • systematic use of import cv2
    • consistent naming of test files
    • PEP 8/257-compliant import grouping and module docstrings
    • revisited suppression comment tags for validity and currency
    • normalized deprecation/warning/docstring language with explicit version tagging
  • image I/O and display
    • iread now uses cv2.imdecode instead of PIL, with internal refactor for corner cases
    • iread_iter is an efficient lazy wildcard iterator
    • idisp now includes keyboard display and animation controls when fps or animate is specified
    • fixed idisp issues with Jupyter Matplotlib backend selection (for example %matplotlib widget)
  • Image class and core API
    • uses _image_typing.py protocol to resolve Image type across mixins
    • improved color order and type logic
    • systematic internal use of ._A for NumPy array access
    • Image(..., dtype=True) forces image dtype to match the ndarray; otherwise the smallest fitting dtype is selected
    • size option supports turning pixel row/column data into 2D or 3D images
    • Image.Tensor() and img.tensor() for PyTorch import/export
    • statistics improvements:
      • sum, min, max, mean, std, median forward arguments to NumPy (for example axis)
      • img.stats is now a property returning per-plane statistics
      • img.printstats() prints formatted per-plane statistics
    • thresholding improvements:
      • native NumPy implementations for otsu and triangle threshold estimators
      • threshold_interactive reworked for Jupyter support
    • NaN/Inf handling:
      • img.numnan and img.numinf properties
      • fixbad() for remediation
      • reporting in repr() and str()
    • NumPy ufunc integration (for example np.ceil(img) returns an Image)
    • % operator stacks images plane-wise (for example img1 % img2, img1 % 0)
    • Image.Random() supports multi-channel images
    • img1.sameas(img2) performs scalar equality checks across datatype/planes/pixels (img1 == img2 remains element-wise)
  • Histogram class
    • now implemented on NumPy rather than OpenCV for wider dtype support
    • works properly in Jupyter
    • histogram computation moved to constructor
    • clip controls bin range behaviour
    • plotting options for span, log, cursor, and stats markers
  • Blobs class
    • major internal refactor; Blob is now a dataclass
    • improved handling of runt (single-pixel) blobs
    • added id method
    • new attributes/methods: MER()/plot_MER(), MEC()/plot_MEC()
  • Image sources
    • all sources are iterators and context managers, reworked the common abstract base class
    • all sources inherit display/animation (.disp()) and batch tensor (.tensor()) methods
    • all sources accept keyword arguments forwarded to convert
    • VideoCamera has a new list method showing camera name/id mapping
    • VideoFile, WebCam, and EarthView are unchanged
  • CLI
    • improved --help strings and option ordering
    • mvtbtool supports image preloading into the IPython namespace, autoreload, optional PyTorch import, and MVTB_OPTIONS environment variable
    • tagtool reports ArUco/April tags to stdout or JSON
  • notebook support
    • notebooks revamped and extended
    • threshold_interactive works in Jupyter
    • notebook workflows are unit-testable
    • distributed as a ZIP built by GitHub Actions
    • distributed in a zero-install JupyterLite environment (WASM + Emscripten)

• Deprecated

  • iread(..., grey=...) and iread(..., gray=...); use mono= instead
  • img.image and img.A; use img.array
  • img.to_int() and img.to_float(); use img.array_as()
  • column; use view1d
  • thresh(); use threshold()
  • threshold keyword t; use threshold
  • threshold keyword opt; use method
  • ithresh; use threshold_interactive
  • adaptive_threshold; use threshold_adaptive
  • legacy Image.Constant positional size form (for example migrate from Image.Constant(10, 20, 30) to Image.Constant(30, size=(10, 20)))
  • ImageCollection; use FileCollection
  • ZipArchive; use FileArchive

• Fixed

  • resolved many Sphinx warnings
  • resolved issues in plot/runblock examples
  • improved OpenCV documentation link consistency where intersphinx is not effective
  • fixed issues in idisp that confused Jupyter Matplotlib backend selection

• Miscellaneous

  • generated OpenCV guard functions from OpenCV documentation for input validation
  • Kernel class refactored to its own file
  • ROS synchronization support via SyncROSStreams

1.0.2 January 2026

• Image class

  • warp_affine can now warp an image into a given output image

  • graphic primitives

  • create an ArUco marker

  • save as PDF

  • all the draw_xxx() functions in base now have wrappers as methods of Image

  • draw_xxx() now handle floating point arguments, rounding them to the neares int

  • improvements in name2color to handle image datatypes and colororder

• FiducialCollection class, represent a generalized calibration board with AR tags

• ArUcoBoard class, represent a generalized ArUco calibration board

• changed to src folder layout, code is in src/machinevisiontoolbox

• changed from setuptools to hatch

• works if Open3D is not installed, it's always well behind in Python version support

• removed numpy < 2.0 constraint, OpenCV now suppports numpy 2.x

• working with Python 3.12 (except for Open3D)

• added command line tools:

  • imtool for displaying images, exploring pixels, picking points, showing metadata etc. Works with your own images or those provided with MVTB
  • tagtool for highlighting AR tags in images

1.0.1 March 2025

• Image class

  • .dice method, chops an image up into tiles, can be overlapping
  • .Tile(columns=0) will arrange the tiles into a roughly square layout
  • Constant images, previously many of these could only generate square images, this is now generalized
  • .Chequerboard creates a chequerboard pattern
  • set background color for image warp undefined pixels
  • single plane images can have a colorplane name
  • deprecate colordict(), use colororder2dict() instead
  • String now supports two string formats, can create color images
  • fixed bug with gamma="sRGB" which always returned a float image, type is now the same as passed

• Blobs

  • new methods for blob aligned box, plot_aligned_box,
  • plot_perimeter options
  • perimeter_hull convex hull
  • fixed bug with runt blobs

• Kernels

  • added Kernel.HGauss for Hessian of Gaussian
  • added Kernel repr method, disp method ArUcoBoard class

• Camera models

  • Fixed errors in some camera projection models

• Point clouds

  • PointCloud now has a "constructor" for depth images, PointCloud.DepthImage()

• Miscellaneous

  • Lots more code examples and plots
  • Move decoratores scalar_result and array_result to machinevisiontoolbox.decorators.py
  • improved unit testing

1.0.0 January 2025

• Kernel methods now return Kernel instances rather than NumPy arrays. Methods that accept a kernel can accept a Kernel instance or a NumPy array. Methods exist to stringify or print a kernel.

• The indexing order of an Image object (using square bracket __getitem__ access) has changed and is now img[u,v] where u is the column coordinate and v is the row coordinate. This is consistent with the column-first convention used across the Toolbox and is consistent with the $(u,v)$ coordinate system for images. But, this is the opposite order to that used for NumPy index on the underlying array, and to earlier versions of the Toolbox.

  • a 2-tuple of integers, select this pixel. If the image has multiple planes, the result is a vector over planes.
  • a 3-tuple of integers, for a multiplane image select this pixel from the specified plane.
  • a 2-tuple of slice objects, select this region. If the image has multiple planes, the result is a 3D array.
  • a 3-tuple of slice objects, select this region of uv and planes
  • an int, select this plane
  • a string, select this named plane or planes

• added pixel(u,v) method for faster access to a single pixel value, scalar or vector.

• the children of a Blob is now given as a list of Blob objects, not their indices within the overall list of blobs. This simplies traversing the blob hierarchy tree. Similarly, the parent is a reference to the parent Blob object rather than an index, and is None if the blob has no parent (its parent is the background).

• Documentation overhaul, both in-code docstrings, and the organization of the overall Sphinx document.

• Additional unit tests

• Myriad minor bug fixes, see commit history.