Computer determination of placement in a drawing for art therapy assessments

Important elements for art therapy assessments include the placement of the subject matter of a drawing on the paper. The placement is classified into 1 of 10 categories, a usual and 9 unusual ones. Similar to other elements in a drawing such as the color, theme, line, shape, structural organization, etc., the determination of placement category encounters the problem of human raters’ subjectivity. This paper delineates the development of a computer system to determine the placement category automatically and objectively, applying the digital image processing methods of color recognition and edge detection. The system divides the entire page into several regions and considers the distribution of edge pixels in each region as the criteria for the corresponding placement category. The proposed computer procedure can provide clear, accurate and quantitative information on the placement category. The information is also useful for the determination of space usage and the details of a drawing. The computer system is verified through case studies. It can become a useful tool and an aid for human experts’ ratings in art therapy assessments.