Reading MNIST dataset with javascript/node.js

Question

Reading MNIST dataset with javascript/node.js

I'm trying to decode the dataset from this source: http://yann.lecun.com/exdb/mnist/

There is a description of the "very simple" IDX file type in the bottom, but I cannot figure it out.

What I'm trying to achieve is something like:

var imagesFileBuffer = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/train-images-idx3-ubyte');
var labelFileBuffer  = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/train-labels-idx1-ubyte');
var pixelValues      = {};

Do magic

pixelValues are now like:

// {
//   "0": [0,0,200,190,79,0... for all 784 pixels ... ],
//   "4": [0,0,200,190,79,0... for all 784 pixels ... ],

etc for all image entries in the dataset. I've tried to figure out the structure of the binary files, but failed.

javascript
node.js
neural-network
mnist

Answer 1

I realized there would be duplicate keys in my structure of the pixelValues object, so I made an array of objects of it instaed. The following code will create the structure I'm after:

var dataFileBuffer  = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/train-images-idx3-ubyte');
var labelFileBuffer = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/train-labels-idx1-ubyte');
var pixelValues     = [];

// It would be nice with a checker instead of a hard coded 60000 limit here
for (var image = 0; image <= 60000; image++) { 
    var pixels = [];

    for (var x = 0; x <= 27; x++) {
        for (var y = 0; y <= 27; y++) {
            pixels.push(dataFileBuffer[(image * 28 * 28) + (x + (y * 28)) + 15]);
        }
    }

    var imageData  = {};
    imageData[JSON.stringify(labelFileBuffer[image + 8])] = pixels;

    pixelValues.push(imageData);
}

The structure of pixelValues is now something like this:

[
    {5: [28,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0...]},
    {0: [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0...]},
    ...
]

There are 28x28=784 pixel values, all varying from 0 to 255.

To render the pixels, use my for loops like I did above, rendering the first pixel in the upper left corner, then working towards the right.