quaternion_to_rgb — QUAT convert op

Data kinds: qimagergbimage

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

Usage

Vector part of a quaternion image, as linear RGB. → (H, W, 3).

The inverse of :func:rgb_to_quaternion — and, by default, a *checked*

inverse. A quaternion image that picked up a scalar component somewhere (a

Hamilton product with a non-pure quaternion, a monogenic signal handed here

by mistake) is refused rather than silently truncated, because dropping

the `w` component is exactly the kind of loss that produces a plausible

picture from the wrong data. Pass `allow_scalar=True` to opt in to the

truncation when it is what you meant.

The tolerance is relative to the field's own peak modulus

(:data:_MONOGENIC_K_TOL, 1e-9): a quaternion image that really is pure

carries `|w|` at the 1e-17 level after a round trip through two FFTs, and

anything with a meaningful scalar part is many orders above that. Nothing

real lives in between.

Raises `ValueError: *qimage* is not a finite (H, W, 4)` array; or

it has a non-negligible scalar part and `allow_scalar` is False.

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 rgbimage as input)

rgb_to_quaternion

Same category (convert)

rgb_to_quaternion · quat_norm


*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.