Roly

A comparison of various moving window median algorithms and implementations.

Roly current contains three moving window median algorithms:

• Python "for loop"
• Linked list written in C and wrapped in Cython
• Double heap (3 implementations) written in C and wrapped in Cython

So far all the moving window functions in roly calculate the median of a 1d window, not 2d is often done in image work.

The roly project is discussed on the Bottleneck mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/bottle-neck

Install

You'll need to install Cython. Then clone or download roly. Then make:

$ cd roly/roly
$ make all

Example

Let's find the moving window median of a 1d array using the linked list and double heap methods. First create a numpy array:

>>> import roly
>>> import numpy as np
>>> a = np.random.rand(5)
>>> a
array([ 0.4645463 ,  0.44380489,  0.31820587,  0.6821211 ,  0.4912904 ])

Then try the linked list method:

>>> roly.linkedlist.move_median(a, 3)
array([        nan,         nan,  0.44380489,  0.44380489,  0.4912904 ])

And the double heap method:

>>> roly.doubleheap.move_median(a, 3)
array([        nan,         nan,  0.44380489,  0.44380489,  0.4912904 ])

The are three implementations of the double heap method (the first one contains a bug):

>>> roly.doubleheap.move_median
>>> roly,doubleheap2.move_median
>>> roly.doubleheap3.move_median

roly also has a slow (python for loop) reference inplementation which is useful for unit testing:

>>> roly.slow.move_median(a, 3)
array([        nan,         nan,  0.44380489,  0.44380489,  0.4912904 ])

Performance

Roly contain a benchmark. To run it:

$ cd roly/roly
$ python run_tests.py

Roly license

Roly contains code from other projects, the license for which should appear in the corresponding code files.