How to generate 2D gaussian with Python?

import numpy as np

# define normalized 2D gaussian
def gaus2d(x=0, y=0, mx=0, my=0, sx=1, sy=1):
    return 1. / (2. * np.pi * sx * sy) * np.exp(-((x - mx)**2. / (2. * sx**2.) + (y - my)**2. / (2. * sy**2.)))

x = np.linspace(-5, 5)
y = np.linspace(-5, 5)
x, y = np.meshgrid(x, y) # get 2D variables instead of 1D
z = gaus2d(x, y)

Straightforward implementation and example of the 2D Gaussian function. Here sx and sy are the spreads in x and y direction, mx and my are the center coordinates.

I'd like to add an approximation using exponential functions. This directly generates a 2d matrix which contains a movable, symmetric 2d gaussian.

I should note that I found this code on the scipy mailing list archives and modified it a little.

import numpy as np

def makeGaussian(size, fwhm = 3, center=None):
    """ Make a square gaussian kernel.

    size is the length of a side of the square
    fwhm is full-width-half-maximum, which
    can be thought of as an effective radius.
    """

    x = np.arange(0, size, 1, float)
    y = x[:,np.newaxis]

    if center is None:
        x0 = y0 = size // 2
    else:
        x0 = center[0]
        y0 = center[1]

    return np.exp(-4*np.log(2) * ((x-x0)**2 + (y-y0)**2) / fwhm**2)

For reference and enhancements, it is hosted as a gist here. Pull requests welcome!

Since the standard 2D Gaussian distribution is just the product of two 1D Gaussian distribution, if there are no correlation between the two axes (i.e. the covariant matrix is diagonal), just call random.gauss twice.

def gauss_2d(mu, sigma):
    x = random.gauss(mu, sigma)
    y = random.gauss(mu, sigma)
    return (x, y)

If you can use numpy, there is numpy.random.multivariate_normal(mean, cov[, size]).

For example, to get 10,000 2D samples:

np.random.multivariate_normal(mean, cov, 10000)

where mean.shape==(2,) and cov.shape==(2,2).