Finding index of nearest point in numpy arrays of x and y coordinates

scipy.spatial also has a k-d tree implementation: scipy.spatial.KDTree.

The approach is generally to first use the point data to build up a k-d tree. The computational complexity of that is on the order of N log N, where N is the number of data points. Range queries and nearest neighbour searches can then be done with log N complexity. This is much more efficient than simply cycling through all points (complexity N).

Thus, if you have repeated range or nearest neighbor queries, a k-d tree is highly recommended.

Here is a scipy.spatial.KDTree example

In [1]: from scipy import spatial

In [2]: import numpy as np

In [3]: A = np.random.random((10,2))*100

In [4]: A
Out[4]:
array([[ 68.83402637,  38.07632221],
       [ 76.84704074,  24.9395109 ],
       [ 16.26715795,  98.52763827],
       [ 70.99411985,  67.31740151],
       [ 71.72452181,  24.13516764],
       [ 17.22707611,  20.65425362],
       [ 43.85122458,  21.50624882],
       [ 76.71987125,  44.95031274],
       [ 63.77341073,  78.87417774],
       [  8.45828909,  30.18426696]])

In [5]: pt = [6, 30]  # <-- the point to find

In [6]: A[spatial.KDTree(A).query(pt)[1]] # <-- the nearest point 
Out[6]: array([  8.45828909,  30.18426696])

#how it works!
In [7]: distance,index = spatial.KDTree(A).query(pt)

In [8]: distance # <-- The distances to the nearest neighbors
Out[8]: 2.4651855048258393

In [9]: index # <-- The locations of the neighbors
Out[9]: 9

#then 
In [10]: A[index]
Out[10]: array([  8.45828909,  30.18426696])