Computer Vision &Image

Processing

AMBO UNIVERITY WOLISO CAMPUS

D E PA R T M E N T O F C O M P U T E R S C I E C N E

CHAPTER TWO

I N T R O D U C T I O N T O D I G I TA L I M A G E
PROCESSING:
 Topics we will cover
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Introduction to Digital Image

Processing
 Levels of Image Processing
APPLICATIONS OF DIGITAL IMAGE
PROCESSING
Components of Image processing
System:
Fundamental Steps in Digital Image
Processing
SAMPLING AND QUANTIZATION
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Introduction
Vision allows humans to perceive and understand the
world surrounding us.
• Computer vision aims to duplicate the effect of human
vision
• by electronically perceiving and understanding an image.
• Giving computers the ability to see is not an easy task
• When computers try to analyze objects in 3D space,
available visual sensors usually give two dimensional
(2D) images
• Projection to a lower number of dimensions incurs an
enormous loss of information.
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• In order to simplify the task of computer vision two levels

are usually distinguished;
• low level image processing
• high level image understanding.
• Low level methods usually use very little knowledge
about the content of images.
• High level processing is based on knowledge, goals, and
plans of how to achieve those goals.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) methods are used in many
cases. High level computer vision tries to imitate human
cognition and the ability to make decisions according to
the information contained in the image.
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• APPLICATIONS OF DIGITAL IMAGE

PROCESSING
 Digital image processing has a broad spectrum of applications,
such as
Remote sensing via satellites and other spacecrafts
 Image transmission and storage for business applicaations
 Medical processing,
RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging)
SONAR(Sound Navigation and Ranging) and
Acoustic image processing (The study of underwater sound is
known as underwater
acoustics or hydro acoustics.)
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Images acquired by satellites are useful in tracking of

 Earth resources;
 Geographical mapping;
 Prediction of agricultural crops,
 Urban growth and weather monitoring
 Flood and fire control and many other environmental
applications.
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 Space image applications include:

Recognition and analysis of objects contained in images
obtained from deep space-probe missions.
 Image transmission and storage applications occur in

broadcast television
 Teleconferencing
 Transmission of facesimile images(Printed documents and

graphics) for office automation Communication

 Closed-circuit television based security monitoring systems
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 Medical applications:
Processing of chest X- rays
 Cineangiograms
 Projection images of transaxially tomography and
 Medical images that occur in radiology nuclear magnetic

resonance(NMR)
 Ultrasonic scanning
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 Components of Image processing System

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 Image Sensors: two elements are required to acquire digital image.

• first is a physical device that is sensitive to the energy
• second is specialized image processing hardware. It
consists of the digitizer plus hardware that performs
other primitive operations
 Computer: It is a general purpose computer and can range from a
PC to a supercomputer depending on the application.
 In dedicated applications, sometimes specially designed
computer are used to achieve a required level of performance
 Software: specialized modules that perform specific tasks. More
sophisticated software packages allow the integration of these
modules.
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 Mass storage: This capability is a must in image processing

applications.
 An image of size 1024 x1024 pixels, may requires one
Megabytes of storage space if the image is not compressed.
 Image processing applications
falls into three principal categories of storage
i) Short term storage for use during processing
ii) On line storage for relatively fast retrieval
iii) Archival storage such as magnetic tapes and disks
 Image display: Image displays in use today are mainly color TV
monitors.
 These monitors are driven by the outputs of image and graphics
displays cards that are an integral part of computer system.
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 Hardcopy devices: The devices for recording image includes

laser printers, film cameras, heat sensitive devices inkjet units
and digital units such as optical and CD ROM disk.
 Films provide the highest possible resolution, but paper is the
obvious medium of choice for written applications.
Networking: It is almost a default function in any computer
system because of
the large amount of data in image processing applications.
 The key consideration in
image transmission bandwidth.
 Fundamental Steps in Digital Image Processing
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 There are two categories of the steps involved in the image processing –
1. Methods whose outputs are images.
2. Methods whose outputs are attributes extracted from those images.
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 Image acquisition: given an image that is already in digital form image acquisition
stage involves processing such scaling.
 Image Enhancement: The simplest and most appealing areas of digital image
processing.
 To bring out details that are obscured or simply to highlight certain features of interest
in image.
 Image enhancement is a very subjective area of image processing
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Image Restoration: It deals with improving the appearance of

an image.
 It is an objective approach, in the sense that restoration techniques
tend to be based on mathematical or probabilistic models of image
processing.
 Enhancement, on the other hand is based on human subjective
preferences regarding what constitutes a “good” enhancement
result.
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 Color image processing: It is an area that is been gaining importance because of the
use of digital images over the internet.
 Color image processing deals with basically color models and their implementation in
image processing applications.
 Wavelets and Multiresolution Processing: These are the foundation for representing
image in various degrees of resolution.
Compression: Reducing the storage required to save an image, or the bandwidth
 It has to major approaches a) Lossless Compression b) Lossy Compression
 Morphological processing: It deals with tools for extracting image components that
are useful in the representation and description of shape and boundary of objects.
 It is majorly used in automated inspection applications.
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 Representation and Description: Raw pixel data, constituting

either the boundary of an image or points in the region itself.
 In either case converting the data to a form suitable for computer
processing necessary.
 Recognition: It is the process that assigns label to an object
based on its descriptors. It is the last step of image processing
which use artificial intelligence of software.
Knowledge base: Knowledge about a problem domain is coded
into an image processing system in the form of a knowledge
base.
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This knowledge may be as simple as detailing regions

of an image where the information of the interest in
known to be located.
 The knowledge base also can be quite complex such
interrelated list of all major possible defects in a
materials inspection problems or an image database
containing high resolution satellite images of a region in
connection with change detection application.
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A Simple Image Model:

An image is denoted by a two dimensional function of
the form f{x, y}.
The value or amplitude of f at spatial coordinates {x,y}
is a positive scalar quantity whose physical meaning is
determined by the source of the image.
When an image is generated by a physical process, its
values are proportional to energy radiated by a physical
source.

 SAMPLING AND QUANTIZATION
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 To create a digital image, we need to convert the continuous
sensed data into digital from.
 This involves two processes – sampling and quantization.
 An image may be continuous with respect to the x and y
coordinates and also in amplitude.
 The function f(x,y) may be characterized by two components-
 The amount of the source illumination incident on the scene

being viewed.
 The amount of the source illumination reflected back by the

objects in the scen

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 To convert it into digital form we have to sample the function in

both coordinates and in amplitudes.
 Digitalizing the coordinate values is called sampling.
 Digitalizing the amplitude values is called quantization.

 There is a continuous the image along the line segment AB.

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 In order to form a digital, the Gray level values must also be

converted (quantized) into
discrete quantities.
 So we divide the Gray level scale into eight discrete levels
ranging from eight level values.
 The continuous Gray levels are quantized simply by assigning
one of the eight discrete Gray levels to each sample.
 The assignment it made depending on the vertical proximity of a
simple to a vertical tick mark.
 Starting at the top of the image and covering out this procedure
line by line produces a two dimensional digital image.
 Digital Image definition:
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 A digital image f(m,n) described in a 2D discrete space is derived

from an analogy
image f(x,y) in a 2D continuous space through a sampling
process that is frequently referred to as digitization.
 The effect of digitization is shown in figure.
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The 2D continuous image f(x,y) is divided into N rows

and M columns. The
intersection of a row and a column is termed a pixel.
The value assigned to the integer coordinates (m,n) with
m=0,1,2..N-1 and n=0,1,2…N-1 is f(m,n).
 In fact, in most cases, is actually a function of many
variables including depth, color and time (t).
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 There are three types of computerized processes in the processing

of imag
 Low level process -these involve primitive operations such as
image processing to reduce noise, contrast enhancement and
image sharpening.
 These kind of processes are characterized by fact the both inputs and output are
images.
 Mid level image processing - it involves tasks like
segmentation, description of those objects to reduce them to a
form suitable for computer processing, and classification of
individual objects.

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The inputs to the process are generally images but

outputs are attributes extracted from images.
High level processing – It involves “making sense” of
an ensemble of recognized objects, as in image analysis,
and performing the cognitive functions normally
associated with vision
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 Representing Digital Images:

 The result of sampling and quantization is matrix
of real numbers.
 Assume that an image f(x,y) is sampled so that

the resulting digital image has M rows and N

Columns.
 The values of the coordinates (x,y) now become

discrete quantities thus the value of the

coordinates at orgin become (x,y) =(o,o)
 The next Coordinates value along the first signify

the image along the first row. it does not mean

that these are the actual values of physical
coordinates when the image was sampled
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 The sampling process may be viewed as partitioning

the xy plane into a grid with the coordinates with pair
of values
 Hence f(x,y) is a digital image if Gray level to each

distinct pair of coordinates (x,y).

 This functional assignment is the quantization

process. Due to processing storage and hardware

consideration, the number gray levels typically is an
integer power of 2(L=2^k).
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 Then, the number, b, of bites required to store a digital image is

B=M *N* k When M=N, the equation become b=N^2*k
 When an image can have 2^k Gray levels, it is referred to as “k-

bit”. An image with 256 possible Gray levels is called an “8- bit
image” (256=2^8).
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 Spatial and Gray level resolution:

 Spatial resolution is the smallest discernible details of an image
 Gray levels resolution refers to smallest discernible change in
Gray levels.
 Measuring discernible change in Gray levels is a highly
subjective process reducing the number of bits while repairing
the spatial resolution constant creates the problem of false
contouring.
 It is caused by the use of an insufficient number of Gray levels on
the smooth areas of the digital image . It is generally quite visible
in image displayed using 16 or less uniformly spaced Gray levels.
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 Image sensing and Acquisition: The types of

images in which we are interested are generated by
the combination of an
 “illumination” source and
 the reflection or absorption of energy from that source by the
elements of the “scene” being imaged.
 For example, the illumination may originate from a
source of electromagnetic energy such as
radar, infrared, or X-ray energy.
 But, as noted earlier, it could originate from less
traditional sources, such as ultrasound or even a
computer-generated illumination pattern.
 We could even image a source, such as acquiring
images
 Representation of different digital
images
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Digital Image representation:

Digital image is a finite collection of discrete samples
(pixels) of any observable object.
The pixels represent a two- or higher dimensional
“view” of the object,
The pixel values may represent the amount of visible
light, infra red light, absorption of x-rays, electrons,
The image does not need to have any visual sense;
The images may be obtained by a digital camera,
scanner, electron microscope, ultrasound stethoscope, or
any other optical or non-optical sensor.
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 Examples of digital image are:

 digital photographs
 satellite images
 radiological images (x-rays, mammograms)
 binary images, fax images, engineering drawings
 Computer graphics, CAD drawings, and vector graphics in
general are not considered in this course
 In fact, one goal of intermediate level image processing may be
to reconstruct a model (e.g. vector representation) for a given
digital image.
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Thanks!!!