Computer Vision Tutorial
Computer Vision (CV) is a branch of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that helps
computers to interpret and understand visual information much like humans.
This tutorial is designed for both beginners and experienced professionals and
covers key concepts such as Image Processing, Feature Extraction, Object
Detection, Image Segmentation and other core techniques in CV
Before moving into computer vision, it is recommended to have a foundational
understanding of:
1. Machine Learning
2. Deep Learning
3. OpenCV
These areas form the foundation of computer vision which helps us apply
techniques and algorithms more effectively If we're unfamiliar with any of these
topics, we recommend checking out their respective tutorials to build a solid
foundation.
Mathematical Prerequisites for Computer Vision
Before moving into Computer Vision, having a foundational understanding of
certain mathematical concepts will help us which includes:
1. Linear Algebra
Linear Algebra
Vectors
Matrices and Tensors
Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors
Singular Value Decomposition
2. Probability and Statistics
Probability and Statistics
Probability Distributions
Bayesian Inference and Bayes' Theorem
Markov Chains
Kalman Filters
3. Signal Processing
Signal Processing
Image Filtering and Convolution
Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT)
Fast Fourier Transform (FFT)
Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
Key Concepts in Computer Vision
1. Image Processing
It refers to techniques for manipulating and analyzing digital images. Common
image processing tasks include:
1. Image Transformation
Image Transformation
Geometric Transformations
Fourier Transform
Intensity Transformation
2. Image Enhancement
Image Enhancement
Histogram Equalization
Contrast Enhancement
Image Sharpening
Color Correction
3. Noise Reduction Techniques
Noise Reduction Techniques
Median Filtering
Bilateral Filtering
Wavelet Denoising
4. Morphological Operations
Morphological Operations
Erosion and Dilation
Opening
Closing
Morphological Gradient
2. Feature Extraction
It involves identifying distinctive elements within an image for analysis and its
techniques include:
1. Edge Detection Techniques
Computer Vision Algorithms
Edge Detection Techniques
Canny Edge Detector
Sobel Operator
Laplacian of Gaussian (LoG)
2. Corner and Interest Point Detection
Harris Corner Detection
3. Feature Descriptors
Feature Descriptors
SIFT (Scale-Invariant Feature Transform)
SURF (Speeded-Up Robust Features)
ORB (Oriented FAST and Rotated BRIEF)
HOG (Histogram of Oriented Gradients)
How Does Computer Vision Work?
1. Computer Vision works much like the human eye and brain. First, our eyes
capture the image and send the visual data to our brain. The brain then
processes this information and transforms it into a meaningful
interpretation, recognizing and categorizing the object based on its
properties.
2. In a similar way, Computer Vision uses a camera (acting like the human
eye) to capture images. The visual data is then processed by algorithms to
recognize and identify the objects based on patterns it has learned.
However, before the system can recognize objects in new images, it needs
to be trained on a large dataset of labeled images. This training enables
the system to identify and associate various patterns with their
corresponding labels.
3. For example, imagine providing a computer with thousands of bird song
recordings. The system learns by analyzing features like pitch, rhythm and
duration. Once trained, it can then recognize whether a new sound
resembles a bird song or not.
For more details you can refer to: Steps in Computer Vision
Popular Libraries for Computer Vision
To implement computer vision tasks effectively, various libraries are used:
1. OpenCV: Mostly used open-source library for computer vision tasks like
image processing, video capture and real-time applications.
2. TensorFlow: A popular deep learning framework that includes tools for
building and training computer vision models.
3. PyTorch: Another deep learning library that provides great flexibility for
computer vision tasks for research and development.
4. scikit-image: A part of the scikit-learn ecosystem, this library provides
algorithms for image processing and computer vision.
For more details you can refer to: Computer Vision Libraries
Deep Learning for Computer Vision
Deep learning has greatly enhanced computer vision by allowing machines to
understand and analyze visual data and its key deep learning models include:
1. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs)
Convolutional Neural Networks are designed for learning spatial hierarchies of
features from images and its key components include:
Deep Learning for Computer Vision
Deep learning
Convolutional Neural Networks
Convolutional Layers
Pooling Layers
Fully Connected Layers
2. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)
It consists of two networks (generator and discriminator) that work against each
other to create realistic images. There are various types of GANs each designed
for specific tasks and improvements:
Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)
Deep Convolutional GAN (DCGAN)
Conditional GAN (cGAN)
Cycle-Consistent GAN (CycleGAN)
Super-Resolution GAN (SRGAN)
StyleGAN
3. Variational Autoencoders (VAEs)
They are the probabilistic version of autoencoders which forces the model to
learn a distribution over the latent space rather than a fixed point, some other
autoencoders used in computer vision are:
Autoencoders
Variational Autoencoders (VAEs)
Denoising Autoencoders (DAE)
Convolutional Autoencoder (CAE)
4. Vision Transformers (ViT)
They are inspired by transformers models to treat images and sequence of
patches and process them using self-attention mechanisms, some common
vision transformers include:
Vision Transformers (ViT)
Swin Transformer
CvT (Convolutional Vision Transformer)
5. Vision Language Models
They integrate visual and textual information to perform image processing and
natural language understanding.
Vision language models
CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training)
ALIGN (A Large-scale ImaGe and Noisy-text)
BLIP (Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training)
Computer Vision Tasks
1. Image Classification
It involves analyzing an image and assigning it a specific label or category based
on its content such as identifying whether an image contains a cat, dog or car.
Its techniques are as follows:
Computer Vision Tasks
Image Classification
Image Classification using Support Vector Machine (SVM)
Image Classification using RandomForest
Image Classification using CNN
Image Classification using TensorFlow
Image Classification using PyTorch Lightning
There are various types for Image Classification which are as follows:
Dataset for Image Classification.
Multiclass classification
Multilabel classification
Zero-shot classification
To learn about the datasets for image classification, we can go through the
article on Dataset for Image Classification mentioned above.
2. Object Detection
It involves identifying and locating objects within an image by drawing bounding
boxes around them.
It includes below following Techniques:
Top Computer Vision Models
Object Detection
YOLO (You Only Look Once)
SSD (Single Shot Multibox Detector)
Region-Based Convolutional Neural Networks (R-CNNs)
Fast R-CNN
Faster R-CNN
Mask R-CNN
Object Detection using TensorFlow
Object Detection using PyTorch
Type of Object Detection Concepts are as follows:
Bounding Box Regression
Intersection over Union (IoU)
Region Proposal Networks (RPN)
Non-Maximum Suppression (NMS)
3. Image Segmentation
It involves partitioning an image into distinct regions or segments to identify
objects or boundaries at a pixel level.
Types of image segmentation are:
Image Segmentation
Semantic Segmentation
Instance Segmentation
Panoptic Segmentation
We can perform image segmentation using the following methods:
Image Segmentation using K Means Clustering
Image Segmentation using UNet
Image Segmentation using TensorFlow
Image Segmentation with Mask R-CNN
Need for Computer Vision
1. High Demand in the Job Market: Critical for careers in AI, machine
learning and data science across industries like healthcare, automotive
and robotics.
2. Revolutionizing Industries: Powers advancements in self-driving cars,
medical diagnostics, agriculture and manufacturing by automating visual
tasks.
3. Solving Real-World Problems: Enhances safety, improves medical
imaging and optimizes industrial processes.
4. Improving Accessibility: It helps people with disabilities through image
recognition and sign language translation.
5. Enhancing Consumer Experiences: It personalizes shopping and
improves customer service in retail and entertainment.
Applications of Computer Vision
1. Healthcare: Used for disease detection and medical image analysis (X-
rays, MRIs).
2. Automotive: Helps self-driving cars to detect objects, lane keeping and
traffic sign recognition.
3. Retail: It helps with inventory management, theft prevention and
customer behavior analysis.
4. Agriculture: It is used for crop monitoring and disease detection.
5. Security and Surveillance: It recognizes faces and find suspicious
activities in security footage.