DSP Image Processing
DSP Image Processing
Uses of DSP
DSP has numerous uses especially in different fields. It can be used on almost anything
we want to apply it to. Some of these are:
Space Medical
Space photograph enhancement Diagnostic imaging (CT, MRI, ultrasound,
Data compression and others)
Intelligent sensory analysis by remote Electrocardiogram analysis
space probes Medical image storage/retrieval
Commercial
Image Processing
Images are signals with special characteristics. First, they are a measure of a parameter
over space (distance), while most signals are a measure of a parameter over time. Second, they
contain a great deal of information. For example, more than 10 megabytes can be required to
store one second of television video. This is more than a thousand times greater than for a
similar length voice signal. Third, the final judge of quality is often a subjective human
evaluation, rather than an objective criteria. These special characteristics have made image
processing a distinct subgroup within DSP.
Medical
In 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Rntgen discovered that x-rays could pass through
substantial amounts of matter. Medicine was revolutionized by the ability to look
inside the living human body. Medical x-ray systems spread throughout the world
in only a few years. In spite of its obvious success, medical x-ray imaging was limited
by four problems until DSP and related techniques came along in the 1970s. First,
overlapping structures in the body can hide behind each other. For example,
portions of the heart might not be visible behind the ribs. Second, it is not always
possible to distinguish between similar tissues. For example, it may be able to
separate bone from soft tissue, but not distinguish a tumor from the liver. Third, x-
ray images show anatomy, the body's structure, and not physiology, the body's
operation. The x-ray image of a living person looks exactly like the x-ray image of a
dead one! Fourth, x-ray exposure can cause cancer, requiring it to be used sparingly
and only with proper justification.
The last three x-ray problems have been solved by using penetrating energy
other than x-rays, such as radio and sound waves. DSP plays a key role in all these
techniques. For example, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) uses magnetic fields
in conjunction with radio waves to probe the interior of the human body. Properly
adjusting the strength and frequency of the fields cause the atomic nuclei in a
localized region of the body to resonate between quantum energy states. This
resonance results in the emission of a secondary radio wave, detected with an
antenna placed near the body. The strength and other characteristics of this
detected signal provide information about the localized region in resonance.
Adjustment of the magnetic field allows the resonance region to be scanned
throughout the body, mapping the internal structure. This information is usually
presented as images, just as in computed tomography. Besides providing excellent
discrimination between different types of soft tissue, MRI can provide information
about physiology, such as blood flow through arteries. MRI relies totally on Digital
Signal Processing techniques, and could not be implemented without them.
Space
Sometimes, you just have to make the most out of a bad picture. This is
frequently the case with images taken from unmanned satellites and space
exploration vehicles. No one is going to send a repairman to Mars just to tweak the
knobs on a camera! DSP can improve the quality of images taken under extremely
unfavorable conditions in several ways: brightness and contrast adjustment, edge
detection, noise reduction, focus adjustment, motion blur reduction, etc. Images
that have spatial distortion, such as encountered when a flat image is taken of a
spherical planet, can also be warped into a correct representation. Many individual
images can also be combined into a single database, allowing the information to be
displayed in unique ways. For example, a video sequence simulating an aerial flight
over the surface of a distant planet.
Before After