Introduction
What is Digital Image
• A digital image is a representation of a two-
dimensional function f(x,y) as a finite set of
digital values, called picture elements or
pixels
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Energy Source of Images
• The principal energy source for images in use today is the
electromagnetic (EM)energy spectrum.
• Synthetic images, used for modeling and visualization, are
generated by computer.
• Electromagnetic waves can be conceptualized as propagating
sinusoidal waves of varying wavelengths, or they can be thought
of as a stream of massless particles, each traveling in a wavelike
pattern and moving at the speed of light.
• Each mass-less particle contains a certain amount (or bundle) of
energy. Each bundle of energy is called a photon.
• If spectral bands are grouped according to energy per photon,
we obtain the spectrum
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What is Digital Image? (Cont.)
• Pixel values typically represent intensity, gray levels,
colours, heights, depths, opacities etc
• Remember digitization implies that a digital image is an
approximation of a real scene.
1 pixel
• When x, y, and the intensity values of f are all finite,
discrete quantities, we call the image a digital image.
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What is
Digital Image Processing?
• Digital image processing focuses on
two major tasks
o Improvement of pictorial information for human
interpretation
o Processing of image data for storage, transmission and
representation for autonomous machine perception
• No General agreement where Image Processing
Starts and Stops
• Image Processing
• Computer Vision
• Artificial Intelligence
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Digital Image Processing
• The continuum from image processing to
computer vision can be broken up into low-,
mid- and high-level processes
Low Level Process Mid Level Process High Level Process
Input: Image Input: Image Input: Attributes
Output: Image Output: Attributes Output:
Understanding
Examples: Noise Examples: Object Examples: Scene
removal, image recognition, segmentation understanding,
sharpening autonomous navigation
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Few Applications:
Satellite Imaging
• Launched in 1990 the Hubble
telescope can take images of
very distant objects
• However, an incorrect mirror
made many of Hubble’s
images useless
• Image processing
techniques were
used to fix this
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Animation
• Artistic effects are used to make images more visually appealing,
to add special effects and to make composite images
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Medicine
Take slice from MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging)
scan of a heart, and find boundaries between types
of tissue
o Image with gray levels representing tissue density
o Use a suitable filter to highlight edges
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Law Enforcement
•Image processing techniques are used extensively by law
enforcers
o Number plate recognition for speed cameras/automated
toll systems
o Fingerprint recognition
Embedded Image Processing 10
Human Computer
Interaction
•Try to make human computer interfaces more natural
o Face recognition
o Gesture recognition
•Does anyone remember the
user interface from “Minority Report”?
•These tasks can be extremely difficult
Embedded Image Processing 11
Digital Image Representation
➢ A digital image is an image f(x,y) that has been digitized both
in spatial coordinates and brightness.
➢ The value of f at any point (x,y) is proportional to the
brightness (or gray level) of the image at that point.
0 f (i, j) 2bpp
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Color Image
• Separate Channel for different color
o RGB
• Some model separates Color information from Brightness
intensity
o HSI
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Coordinate Convention
FIGURE: Coordinate convention to represent Digital Image
FIGURE: Matrix Representation FIGURE: Element-wise Representation
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Matrix Flattening
• For performance reasons
we usually do not store
images in the matrix
fashion when coding
image processing
algorithms in Embedded
Systems.
• There are two prevalent
ordering schemes for
storing flattened 2D
matrices:
o Row-major and
o Column-major.
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Matrix Flattening
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Thanks
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