Digital Image Processing

Digital Imaging Fundamentals

Images taken from:

R. Gonzalez and R. Woods. Digital Image Processing, Prentice Hall, 2008.
Digital Image Processing course by Brian Mac Namee, Dublin Institute of Technology.
 2 Structure Of The Human Eye
The lens focuses light from objects onto the retina
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

The retina is covered with

light receptors called
cones (6-7 million) and
rods (75-150 million)
Cones are concentrated
around the fovea and are
very sensitive to colour
Rods are more spread out
and are sensitive to low levels
of illumination
3 Image Formation In The Eye
Muscles within the eye can be used to
change the shape of the lens allowing us
focus on objects that are near or far away
An image is focused onto the retina causing
rods and cones to become excited which
ultimately send signals to the brain
4 Optical Illusions

Our visual
systems play lots
of interesting
tricks on us
5
Light And The Electromagnetic
Spectrum
Light is just a particular part of the
electromagnetic spectrum that can be
sensed by the human eye
The electromagnetic spectrum is split up
according to the wavelengths of different
forms of energy
6 Reflected Light
The colours that we perceive are determined
by the nature of the light reflected from an
object
For example, if white
light is shone onto a
green object most Colours

wavelengths are Absorbed

absorbed, while green

light is reflected from
the object
7 Sampling, Quantisation And Resolution

In the following slides we will consider what

is involved in capturing a digital image of a
real-world scene
– Image sensing and representation
– Sampling and quantisation
– Resolution
 8 Image Representation
A digital image is composed of M rows and
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

N columns of pixels
each storing a value
col
Pixel values are most
often grey levels in the
range 0-255(black-white)
We will see later on
that images can easily
be represented as
matrices f (row, col)
row
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

9
Colour images
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

10
Colour images
 11 Image Acquisition
Images are typically generated by
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

illuminating a scene and absorbing the

energy reflected by the objects in that scene
 12 Image Sensing
Incoming energy lands on a sensor material
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

responsive to that type of energy and this

generates a voltage
Collections of sensors are arranged to
capture images

Imaging Sensor

Line of Image Sensors Array of Image Sensors

 13 Image Sampling And Quantisation
A digital sensor can only measure a limited
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

number of samples at a discrete set of

energy levels
Quantisation is the process of converting a
continuous analogue signal into a digital
representation of this signal
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

14
Image Sampling And Quantisation
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

15
Image Sampling And Quantisation
 16
Image Sampling And Quantisation
(cont…)
Remember that a digital image is always
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

only an approximation of a real world

scene
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

17
Image Representation
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

18
Image Representation
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

19
Image Representation
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

20
Image Representation
21 Spatial Resolution
The spatial resolution of an image is
determined by how sampling was carried out
Spatial resolution simply refers to the
smallest discernable detail in an image
– Vision specialists will
often talk about pixel
size
– Graphic designers will
talk about dots per
inch (DPI)
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

22
Spatial Resolution (cont…)
 23 Spatial Resolution (cont…)
1024 * 1024 512 * 512 256 * 256
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

128 * 128 64 * 64 32 * 32
24 Intensity Level Resolution
Intensity level resolution refers to the
number of intensity levels used to represent
the image
– The more intensity levels used, the finer the level of
detail discernable in an image
– Intensity level resolution is usually given in terms of
the number of bits used to store each intensity level
Number of Intensity
Number of Bits Examples
Levels
1 2 0, 1
2 4 00, 01, 10, 11
4 16 0000, 0101, 1111
8 256 00110011, 01010101
16 65,536 1010101010101010
 25 Intensity Level Resolution (cont…)
256 grey levels (8 bits per pixel) 128 grey levels (7 bpp) 64 grey levels (6 bpp) 32 grey levels (5 bpp)
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

16 grey levels (4 bpp) 8 grey levels (3 bpp) 4 grey levels (2 bpp) 2 grey levels (1 bpp)
26 Histogram Example: Height of Trees
You measure the height of every tree in the orchard in centimeters (cm)
The heights vary from 100 cm to 340 cm.
You decide to put the results into groups of 50 cm:
The 100 to just below 150 cm range,
The 150 to just below 200 cm range, …etc...
So a tree that is 260 cm tall is added to the "250-300" range. And here is the result: