How to recode bands in which max value occur using ArcGIS Desktop?

Question

I have 2 raster images; ras1 (an image with max value) and ras2 (an image with 5 bands). Basically. ras1 image extracted from ras2 images.

I'd like to find bands from ras2 in which max value occur and recode them 1 to 5. For example, ras2 has band1, b2, b3, b4, b5. if max value of ras1 occur in band 3, 3 return to output, if max of ras1 occur in band 4, 4 return to output etc.

Could you give me suggestion what tool in Arcgis has ability to do this?

I used inlist tool, but it gave me the values (not the number 1-5).

Answer 1

You can achieve this using the numpy.argmax() function. Enter the following into the Python console (adjust to taste):

import arcpy
import numpy

# convert the raster to a 3-dimensional numpy array (x, y, band)
values = arcpy.RasterToNumPyArray("ras2")

# calculate the index of the maximum value along the band axis

#(1-based, rather than the default 0-based)
indices = numpy.argmax(values, axis=2) + 1

# write the output to a new raster
raster = arcpy.NumPyArrayToRaster(indices)
raster.save('C:/ArcGIS/maximum.tif')

Not tested, as I don't have ArcGIS to hand...

Relevant documentation:

http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.argmax.html http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//000v0000012z000000