Numpy and line intersections

Question

How would I use numpy to calculate the intersection between two line segments?

In the code I have segment1 = ((x1,y1),(x2,y2)) and segment2 = ((x1,

Answer 1

This is is a late response, perhaps, but it was the first hit when I Googled 'numpy line intersections'. In my case, I have two lines in a plane, and I wanted to quickly get any intersections between them, and Hamish's solution would be slow -- requiring a nested for loop over all line segments.

Here's how to do it without a for loop (it's quite fast):

from numpy import where, dstack, diff, meshgrid

def find_intersections(A, B):

    # min, max and all for arrays
    amin = lambda x1, x2: where(x1<x2, x1, x2)
    amax = lambda x1, x2: where(x1>x2, x1, x2)
    aall = lambda abools: dstack(abools).all(axis=2)
    slope = lambda line: (lambda d: d[:,1]/d[:,0])(diff(line, axis=0))

    x11, x21 = meshgrid(A[:-1, 0], B[:-1, 0])
    x12, x22 = meshgrid(A[1:, 0], B[1:, 0])
    y11, y21 = meshgrid(A[:-1, 1], B[:-1, 1])
    y12, y22 = meshgrid(A[1:, 1], B[1:, 1])

    m1, m2 = meshgrid(slope(A), slope(B))
    m1inv, m2inv = 1/m1, 1/m2

    yi = (m1*(x21-x11-m2inv*y21) + y11)/(1 - m1*m2inv)
    xi = (yi - y21)*m2inv + x21

    xconds = (amin(x11, x12) < xi, xi <= amax(x11, x12), 
              amin(x21, x22) < xi, xi <= amax(x21, x22) )
    yconds = (amin(y11, y12) < yi, yi <= amax(y11, y12),
              amin(y21, y22) < yi, yi <= amax(y21, y22) )

    return xi[aall(xconds)], yi[aall(yconds)]

Then to use it, provide two lines as arguments, where is arg is a 2 column matrix, each row corresponding to an (x, y) point:

# example from matplotlib contour plots
Acs = contour(...)
Bsc = contour(...)

# A and B are the two lines, each is a 
# two column matrix
A = Acs.collections[0].get_paths()[0].vertices
B = Bcs.collections[0].get_paths()[0].vertices

# do it
x, y = find_intersections(A, B)

have fun