# Or More Object Oriented Programming (OOP) in R

As I told you in one of my recent posts I implemented a lot of functions related to image processing and built a lot on my image processing framework in the R programming language. Changes I did include methods I learned in the lecture, e.g. convolutions, filters of different kinds and calculation of statistical features. But I also did some code refactoring and included some new helper methods.
A set of those helper methods will be the topic of this blog-post. I’m talking about arithmetic image operators. We will need those a lot in later exercises. So it’s useful to have them implemented in an easy-to-use way.

So the basic idea ist just to overload the different arithmetic operators to make them useable with images of the type imageOneChannel1.
It should be possible to use the functions either with two images or one image and one scalar.

## The is. Function

As a little helper we will implement the is.imageOneChannel function. Those functtions with the prefix is are used in R to test if any object is of a given type. It doesn’t save us much time from using the inherits function from the R base, but it makes the process at least somewhat more comfortable.
To be honest what I’ve implemented is just a glorifyed wrapper around the inherits function, but that’s generally how it is done. Of course that leaves us also with the possibility to write a little documentation using roxygen2. So here we go:

#' Is It A One Channel Image
#'
#' @description Checks if an object is of type \code{\link[Raspository]{imageOneChannel}}.
#'
#' @export
#'
#' @param x any R object.
#'
#' @return \code{TRUE}, if the object is of type \code{\link[Raspository]{imageOneChannel}}.
#'  \code{FALSE} otherwise.
#'
#'
#' @examples
is.imageOneChannel <-function(x){
return(inherits(x, "imageOneChannel"))
}


So, that was easy. And it’s not going to get any harder this post actually.

## Arithmetic Image Operators

Overloading an arithmetic operator in R is pretty simple as well. Take a look at the following:

+.imageOneChannel <- function(A, B)

That will be the function header of our plus operator. Let’s analyse it bit by bit.
First the function name is sorrounded by backticks. That’s the way, how you define so called infix operators2, as they contain special symbols, which function names normally can’t.

Then we have the plus sign and after the dot the class name imageOneChannel, which indicates that this is the plus operator for this specific class. Later you don’t call this function as +.imageOneChannel, but just as plus. And as far I noticed it this special operator is always called, as long as one of the two parameters is of type imageOneChannel. But actually I don’t know what would happen, if the other summand would be of any other class, that also has its own plus operator defined. Anyone an idea? But I’ll probably test that at some point of time.
And last like in any other function <- function(A, B) assigns the function to the function name. As a plus function this contains just two parameters.

Now let me show you my full implementation of this arithmetic image operator with documentation:

#' Image Addition
#'
#' @description Addition of one image with another image or a scalar. At least
#' one of the two parameters has to be an image. If both are images, the operation
#' is executed entrywise.
#'
#' @export
#'
#' @param A An image of class \code{\link[Raspository]{imageOneChannel}} or
#' a scalar.
#' @param B An image of class \code{\link[Raspository]{imageOneChannel}} or
#' a scalar.
#'
#' @return The resulting image of class \code{\link[Raspository]{imageOneChannel}}.
#'
#'
#' @examples
+.imageOneChannel <- function(A, B){
if(is.imageOneChannel(B)){
if(is.imageOneChannel(A)){
return(new("imageOneChannel", imageMatrix = A@imageMatrix + B@imageMatrix))
}else{
return(new("imageOneChannel", imageMatrix = A + B@imageMatrix))
}

}else{
return(new("imageOneChannel", imageMatrix = A@imageMatrix + B))
}

}


Pretty easy, isn’t it? We just need to check which one of the two parameters is an image and then access its matrix slot.
I mean for now our imageOneChannel also isn’t much more than a wrapper around a standard matrix in R. But that’s ok, because we definitly want to have some different behaviour defined later on than in a standard matrix. And We also need some methods, that not necessarily make sense for matrices containing other things than pixels.
Some people might know, that I’m not the biggest proponent of OOP and I actually think it’s overused. But if you have some data type, that should express some specific to it behaviour, it’s sensible. Just don’t implement a convoluted inheritance hierarchy with lots abd lots of stuff, you’ll never need and people need at least a PhD to understand. Keep it simple, stupid!

The other arithmetic image operators are implemented in the same manner. I’ll spare you the documentations this time, as they’re essentially all the same, but you can find them in my repository:

-.imageOneChannel <- function(A, B){
if(is.imageOneChannel(B)){
if(is.imageOneChannel(A)){
return(new("imageOneChannel", imageMatrix = A@imageMatrix - B@imageMatrix))
}else{
return(new("imageOneChannel", imageMatrix = A - B@imageMatrix))
}
}else{
return(new("imageOneChannel", imageMatrix  = A@imageMatrix - B))
}

}
*.imageOneChannel <- function(A, B){
if(is.imageOneChannel(B)){
if(is.imageOneChannel(A)){
return(new("imageOneChannel", imageMatrix = A@imageMatrix * B@imageMatrix))
}else{
return(new("imageOneChannel", imageMatrix = A * B@imageMatrix))
}
}else{
return(new("imageOneChannel", imageMatrix = A@imageMatrix * B))
}

}
/.imageOneChannel <- function(A, B){
if(is.imageOneChannel(B)){
if(is.imageOneChannel(A)){
return(new("imageOneChannel", imageMatrix = A@imageMatrix / B@imageMatrix))
}else{
return(new("imageOneChannel", imageMatrix = A / B@imageMatrix))
}
}else{
return(new("imageOneChannel", imageMatrix = A@imageMatrix / B))
}

}

## Testing The Arithmetic Image Operators

library(Raspository)

We can now do lot’s and lots of things with those operators. So first let’s load our test image…

kadser <- imageOneChannelFromJpeg("kadser.jpg")

Without looking at the original image let’s take a look at the negative of the picture.

negativeKadser <- 1 - kadser
writeJPEG.imageOneChannel(negativeKadser, "negativeKadser.jpg")

Spoopy, isn’t it?

And now let’s add this picture together with another one. We’ll have to average them, so that we don’t exceed the maximal grey-value.

owl0r <- imageOneChannelFromJpeg("owl0r.jpg")
writeJPEG.imageOneChannel(addedImages, "addedImages.jpg")

Well, this added image won’t win us any contests, but at least we can say now, that we can add images together. That will be valuable later. You’ll see.

That’salso it for today. See you soon!

## Availability Of The Code

You can access a maintained form of the code in my github repository Raspository under R/imageOperations.R and R/imageOneChannel.R.