Unit I

What Is Image?
• An image is a visual representation of something.
• An image is a picture that has been created or copied and stored in
electronic form.
• An Image is a spatial representation of a two dimensional or three-
dimensional scene.
• It is an array or a matrix pixel (picture elements) arranged in columns and
rows.
• An image is also a two-dimensional array specifically arranged in rows and
columns.
• An image is nothing more than a two dimensional signal.
What Is Image?
 It is defined by the mathematical function
f(x,y) where x and y are the two co-ordinates
horizontally and vertically.

 The value of f(x,y) at any point is gives the

pixel value at that point of an image.

 Image is nothing but a two dimensional array of

numbers ranging between 0 and 255.
What Is Digital Image?
 An image is defined as a two-dimensional function,
F(x,y),

where x and y are spatial coordinates, and the

amplitude of F at any pair of coordinates (x,y) is
called the intensity of that image at that point.

When x, y, and amplitude values of F are finite, we

call it a digital image.
What Is Digital Image?
• Digital Image is composed of a finite number of
elements, each of which elements have a
particular value at a particular location.

• These elements are referred to as picture

elements, image elements and pixels.

• A Pixel is most widely used to denote the

elements of a Digital Image.
What is Image Processing?
 It is a method to perform some operations on an image, in order to get an
enhanced image or to extract some useful information from it.

 It is a type of signal processing in which input is an image and output may

be image or characteristics/features associated with that image.

 Nowadays, image processing is among rapidly growing technologies.

 It forms core research area within engineering and computer science

disciplines too.
Background
Interest in digital image processing methods stems from two principal
application areas:

 Improvement of pictorial information for human interpretation and

 Processing of image data for storage, transmission, and representation for
autonomous machine perception.
Background
• One of the first applications of digital images was in the newspaper
industry, when pictures were first sent by submarine cable between London
and New York.

• Introduction of the Bartlane cable picture transmission system in the early

1920s reduced the time required to transport a picture across the Atlantic
from more than a week to less than three hours.
Example Bartlane transmitted image
 Specialized printing equipment coded
pictures for transmission.
• Received and printed on a telegraph printer
fitted with type faces to simulate a halftone
pattern
• Initial problems –
➢ Poor visual quality related to
printing process and the distribution
of brightness levels
• Image produced in 1921 from a coded tape
by a telegraph printer with special type
faces
Improved Bartlane transmitted image
 Replace the printing process

 New technique used photographic

reproduction made from a perforated
tape at the telegraph receiving terminal.

 Improvements

– tonal quality

– resolution

 Digital picture made in 1922 from a tape

punched after the signals had crossed the
Atlantic twice.
Applications of DIP
 The field of image processing has applications in medicine and the space
program.

 Computer procedures are used to enhance the contrast or code the intensity
levels into color for easier interpretation of X-rays and other images used in
industry, medicine, and the biological sciences.

 Geographers use the same or similar techniques to study pollution patterns

from aerial and satellite imagery.

 Image enhancement and restoration procedures are used to process degraded

images of unrecoverable objects or experimental results too expensive to
duplicate
Types of an image
 BINARY IMAGE– The binary image as its name suggests, contain only two
pixel elements i.e 0 & 1,
where 0 refers to black and 1 refers to white. This image is also known as
Monochrome.
Types of an image
 BLACK AND WHITE IMAGE– The image which consist of only black
and white color is called BLACK AND WHITE IMAGE.
Types of an image
 8 bit COLOR FORMAT– It is the most famous image format. It has 256
different shades of colors in it and commonly known as Grayscale Image. In
this format, 0 stands for Black, and 255 stands for white, and 127 stands for
gray.

 16 bit COLOR FORMAT– It is a color image format. It has 65,536 different

colors in it. It is also known as High Color Format. In this format the
distribution of color is not as same as Grayscale image.

 A 16 bit format is actually divided into three further formats which are Red,
Green and Blue. That famous RGB format.
Primary steps of Image Processing
Image processing basically includes the following three steps:

 Importing the image via image acquisition tools;

 Analyzing and manipulating the image;

 Output in which result can be altered image or report that is based on image
analysis.
Types of methods
There are two types of methods used for image processing
namely,
✓ Analogue and
✓ Digital image processing.
Types of methods
 Analogue image processing can be used for the hard copies like printouts and
photographs. Image analysts use various fundamentals of interpretation while
using these visual techniques.

 Digital image processing techniques help in manipulation of the digital

images by using computers. The three general phases that all types of data
have to undergo while using digital technique are pre-processing,
enhancement, and display, information extraction.
Purposes
There are different purposes of image processing:

 Visualization – Observing objects that are difficult to see.

 Image sharpening and restoration – Improving noisy images.

 Image retrieval – Attractive and high-resolution image search.

 Pattern recognition – Defining various objects in an image.

 Image recognition – Detecting objects in an image.

Image as a Matrix
Images are represented in rows and columns we have the following syntax in
which images are represented:

Every element of this matrix is called image element , picture element , or

pixel.
Fundamental steps in digital image processing
PHASES OF IMAGE PROCESSING
 ACQUISITION– It could be as simple as being given an image which is in
digital form. The main work involves:
a) Scaling
b) Color conversion(RGB to Gray or vice-versa).

 IMAGE ENHANCEMENT– It is amongst the simplest and most appealing

in areas of Image Processing it is also used to extract some hidden details
from an image and is subjective.
PHASES OF IMAGE PROCESSING
 IMAGE RESTORATION– It also deals with appealing of an image but it is
objective(Restoration is based on mathematical or probabilistic model or
image degradation).
PHASES OF IMAGE PROCESSING
 COLOR IMAGE PROCESSING– It deals with pseudo color and full color
image processing color models are applicable to digital image processing.

 WAVELETS AND MULTI-RESOLUTION PROCESSING– It is

foundation of representing images in various degrees.

 IMAGE COMPRESSION-It involves in developing some functions to

perform this operation. It mainly deals with image size or resolution.
PHASES OF IMAGE PROCESSING
 MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSING- It deals with tools for extracting
image components that are useful in the representation & description of
shape.
 Each pixel in the image is adjusted based on the value of other pixels in its
neighborhood.
PHASES OF IMAGE PROCESSING
 SEGMENTATION PROCEDURE-It includes partitioning an image into its
constituent parts or objects.
 Image segmentation is the process of partitioning a digital image into
multiple segments (sets of pixels, also known as image objects).
 Image segmentation is typically used to locate objects and boundaries (lines,
curves, etc.) in images.
 Autonomous segmentation is the most difficult task in Image Processing.
PHASES OF IMAGE PROCESSING
 REPRESENTATION & DESCRIPTION-It follows output of segmentation
stage, choosing a representation is only the part of solution for transforming
raw data into processed data.

 OBJECT DETECTION AND RECOGNITION-It is a process that assigns

a label to an object based on its descriptor.
Elements of digital image processing
systems:
 The basic operations performed in a digital image processing systems include
(1) acquisition, (2) storage, (3) processing, (4) communication and (5)
display.
Components of Image Processing System
Components of Image Processing System
 Image Processing System is the combination of the different elements
involved in the digital image processing.

 Digital image processing is the processing of an image by means of a digital

computer.

 Digital image processing uses different computer algorithms to perform

image processing on the digital images.
Components of Image Processing System
 Image Sensors:
Image sensors senses the intensity, amplitude, co-ordinates and other
features of the images and passes the result to the image processing
hardware. It includes the problem domain.

 Image Processing Hardware:

Image processing hardware is the dedicated hardware that is used to process
the instructions obtained from the image sensors. It passes the result to
general purpose computer.

 Computer:
Computer used in the image processing system is the general purpose
computer that is used by us in our daily life.
Components of Image Processing System
 Image Processing Software:
Image processing software is the software that includes all the mechanisms
and algorithms that are used in image processing system.
 Mass Storage:
Mass storage stores the pixels of the images during the processing.
 Hard Copy Device:
Once the image is processed then it is stored in the hard copy device. It can
be a pen drive or any external ROM device.
 Image Display:
It includes the monitor or display screen that displays the processed images.
 Network:
Network is the connection of all the above elements of the image processing
system.
THANK YOU