Classification of Lightning type in Images

I need to write an application that uses image processing functionality to identify the type of lightning in an image. The lightning types that it has to identify are the cloud to ground and the intracloud lightning which are shown in the pictures below. The cloud to ground lightning has these features: it hits the ground and has flashes branching downwards and the features of the intracloud lightning are that: it has no contact with the ground. Are there any image processing algorithms开发者_JAVA百科 that you guys know which i can use to identify these features in the image such that the application will be able to identify the lightning type? I want to implement this in C++ using the CImg library. Thanking you in advance

!!Since I cant upload photos because am a new user, i posted the links to the images!! http://wvlightning.com/types.shtml

Wow, this seems like a fun algorithm. If you had a large set of images for each type you might be able to use HAAR training (http://note.sonots.com/SciSoftware/haartraining.html) but I'm not sure that would work because of the form of lightning. Maybe HAAR in combination with your own algorithm. For instance it should be very straightforward to know whether the lightning goes to the ground. You could use some OpenCV image analysis to do that - http://www.cs.iit.edu/~agam/cs512/lect-notes/opencv-intro/