Serializing OpenCV Mat_

The earlier answers are good, but they won’t work for non-continuous matrices which arise when you want to serialize regions of interest (among other things). Also, it is unnecessary to serialize elemSize() because this is derived from the type value.

Here’s some code that will work regardless of continuity (with includes/namespace)

#pragma once

#include <boost/archive/text_oarchive.hpp>
#include <boost/archive/text_iarchive.hpp>
#include <boost/serialization/utility.hpp>
#include <opencv2/opencv.hpp>

namespace boost {
namespace serialization {

template<class Archive>
void serialize(Archive &ar, cv::Mat& mat, const unsigned int)
{
    int cols, rows, type;
    bool continuous;

    if (Archive::is_saving::value) {
        cols = mat.cols; rows = mat.rows; type = mat.type();
        continuous = mat.isContinuous();
    }

    ar & cols & rows & type & continuous;

    if (Archive::is_loading::value)
        mat.create(rows, cols, type);

    if (continuous) {
        const unsigned int data_size = rows * cols * mat.elemSize();
        ar & boost::serialization::make_array(mat.ptr(), data_size);
    } else {
        const unsigned int row_size = cols*mat.elemSize();
        for (int i = 0; i < rows; i++) {
            ar & boost::serialization::make_array(mat.ptr(i), row_size);
        }
    }

}

} // namespace serialization
} // namespace boost