Unintended Modification of Bounding Box Format in bbox_areas Property about ultralytics

[glenn-jocher]

@Buckler89 hey there 👋, thanks a lot for such a detailed report! You've pointed out a very valid concern regarding the unintended alteration of bounding box formats within the bbox_areas property.

Indeed, the current design where Bboxes.areas() changes the bounding box format to XYXY without reverting back could lead to unexpected behaviours, especially in pipelines where the original format is essential for subsequent processes.

To address this issue, a potential solution might involve modifying the Bboxes.areas() to perform format conversion and area computation without altering the original format state of the bounding boxes. Here's a quick idea of how that could be structured:

def areas(self, revert_format=True):
    """Return box areas, optionally reverting to original format."""
    original_format = self.format
    self.convert("xyxy")
    areas = (self.bboxes[:, 2] - self.bboxes[:, 0]) * (self.bboxes[:, 3] - self.bboxes[:, 1])
    if revert_format:
        self.convert(original_format)
    return areas

This modification suggests adding a parameter to control whether the bounding boxes should revert to their original format after computing the areas. By default, it reverts to maintaining the original behavior unless specified otherwise.

I'll forward this to our team to verify and implement a fix efficiently. Thanks again for catching this and for your detailed explanation! 😄 If there's anything more you'd like to discuss or suggest, feel free to share!