how do i access contour sequentially in opencv

Question

I am segmenting a handwritten word using contours in opencv (cpp). But after segmenting is gives random output contour.It is not gives as left to right ordering of word.Help me to obtain order.

Answer 1

Assuming that you have something like the following to extract the contours:

// Contros found from input array
cv::Mat _src = src.getMat();
std::vector<std::vector<cv::Point>> contours;
std::vector<cv::Vec4i> hierarchy;
cv::findContours(_src, contours, hierarchy, CV_RETR_EXTERNAL,
        params.contourDetMethod);

You can iterate through your contours (here contors ) and create bounding boxes using cv::boundingRect . Now you can use coordination of the resulting Rect with others and find out their spatial order.