monogenic_orientation — QUAT riesz op

Data kinds: qimageimage2d

Call: import quatimage; quatimage.monogenic_orientation(qimage, display: 'bool' = False) -> 'np.ndarray' (or opsquat.get("monogenic_orientation"))

Usage

Local orientation `atan2(R2, R1)` of a monogenic signal. → (H, W).

Radians in `[0, pi): an orientation is defined modulo pi` (a grating at

10 degrees and one at 190 degrees are the same grating), and the value is

folded into that range rather than left in `(-pi, pi]` where the same

structure would read as two different numbers on either side of a contrast

reversal. `display=True maps it to [0, 1]`.

Continuous, not quantised — the angle is read directly from two filters,

for any angle, where a steerable bank with `K` orientations interpolates

between its `K`. Measured against eight grid-exact grating orientations the

error is at most 3.6e-15 rad, including the obliques. (Whether that

buys anything downstream is a separate question, and the measured answer is

mostly *no* — see :func:riesz_displacement.)

Where it is undefined, and the mask is not the one you expect. The

orientation dies where the *Riesz vector* dies, which is at every

even-symmetric point — local phase 0 or pi, the crest of a bright or dark

line — and the amplitude is at full strength there. Measured on a 45-degree

grating, the worst orientation error over the whole frame is 0.2764 rad, at a

pixel where `|R| = 6.8e-16 and :func:monogenic_amplitude` reads

`1.0000`. So masking on the amplitude does not protect you; mask on

`hypot(q[..., 1], q[..., 2])`, the Riesz magnitude. With that mask the

error over the same eight orientations is at most 3.6e-15 rad.

Where the Riesz vector is exactly zero, `atan2(0, 0) = 0` is returned —

a *value*, not a measurement.

Raises `ValueError`: the input is not a valid quaternion field, or its

`k` component is non-zero; *display* is not a bool.

Detailed usage guide

quaternion_monogenic family guide

References (sample data, literature)

• Sample-data catalog (download URLs / licences) — 2-D uses skimage.data (BSD/public domain) plus synthetic images; 3-D lists download URLs for real data sources (Stanford, PDS, …).

• Operator provenance and references — the sources of the research/methods this op family came from.

• The canonical algorithm (author, year) and its uses are named in the family usage guide above.

Runnable examples (verified samples that actually call this op)

quaternion_monogenicpy -3.11 examples/quaternion_monogenic.py

Ops the type connects to (they accept image2d as input)

riesz_transform · monogenic_signal

Same category (riesz)

riesz_transform · monogenic_signal · monogenic_amplitude · monogenic_phase


*Provenance: quatimage.py — QUAT operator registry. This per-op note is generated by tools/opdocs.py md (do not hand-edit).*

© 2026 Kazufumi Furuse — Fullseye operator documentation. Licensed under Apache-2.0.