1.

Fundamental Steps in Digital Image Processing (15 marks)

Image Acquisition: - This is the first step, where images are captured using
devices like digital cameras or scanners. It involves converting the analog signals
into digital form via sampling (spatial resolution) and quantization (intensity
resolution).
Significance: Without acquisition, there are no images to process. Ensures
the quality of the input data for subsequent steps.
Preprocessing: - Techniques include noise reduction (using filters like Gaus-
sian), contrast enhancement (using histogram equalization), and normalization.
Aimed at preparing the image for further analysis by improving the image’s
clarity.
Significance: Enhances image quality, making features easier to detect and
analyze.
Segmentation: - Divides an image into meaningful regions or objects. Methods
include thresholding, edge detection, region-based segmentation, and clustering.
Significance: Critical for isolating objects of interest within an image, enabling
focused analysis and recognition.
Feature Extraction: - Extracts significant attributes or features such as edges,
textures, and shapes. Techniques include SIFT, HOG, and Gabor filters.
Significance: Converts segmented regions into data that can be used for further
analysis, recognition, and classification.
Image Representation and Description: - Represents features in a form
suitable for analysis, such as boundary descriptors or region descriptors.
Significance: Simplifies the complexity of the image, making the analysis more
efficient and effective.
Recognition and Interpretation: - Assigns labels to identified objects based
on the extracted features and interprets the scene. Techniques include neural
networks and decision trees.
Significance: Final step where the processed image is analyzed and meaningful
information is extracted, leading to actionable insights or decisions.

2. Spatial Domain vs. Frequency Domain Approaches to Image En-

hancement (15 marks)
Spatial Domain: - Involves direct manipulation of pixel values. Techniques
include point processing methods (e.g., contrast stretching) and spatial filtering
(e.g., averaging, median filtering for smoothing; Sobel, Laplacian for sharpen-
ing).

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Advantages: - Intuitive and easy to implement. - Directly modifies pixel values,
making it straightforward to understand and apply.
Limitations: - Not effective for removing periodic noise. - Limited by the local
nature of operations; some global enhancements are harder to achieve.
Frequency Domain: - Involves transforming the image into the frequency
domain using transforms like the Fourier Transform. Enhancements are made
by modifying the frequency components.
Techniques: - Low-pass filters for smoothing, high-pass filters for sharpening,
and band-reject filters for noise removal.
Advantages: - Effective for periodic noise removal. - Provides a different
perspective on image data, allowing frequency-based manipulations.
Limitations: - More complex mathematically and computationally. - Requires
inverse transformation to return to the spatial domain, making it less intuitive.

3. Image Restoration (15 marks)

Concept: - Image restoration focuses on improving the quality of an image by
reversing known degradations, such as blurring or noise.
Techniques: - Inverse Filtering: Direct inversion of the degradation function.
Effective if the degradation function is known and noise is minimal. - Wiener
Filtering: Balances between inverse filtering and noise reduction by considering
the statistical properties of the image and noise. - Regularization Methods:
Include techniques like Total Variation (TV) minimization, which enhance the
image while preserving edges.
Applications: - Medical Imaging: Restoring clarity in images degraded by
motion or noise, crucial for accurate diagnosis. - Astronomical Imaging:
Enhancing images captured through telescopes affected by atmospheric distor-
tions. - Historical Document Restoration: Improving the readability of
old, degraded documents.
Significance: Enhances the visual quality of images, making them more useful
for analysis and interpretation in various fields.

4. Morphological Image Processing (15 marks)

Concept: - Morphological operations process images based on shapes, primarily
applied to binary images but extendable to grayscale.
Operations: - Erosion: Removes pixels on object boundaries. Used to elim-
inate small noise and separate touching objects. - Dilation: Adds pixels to
object boundaries. Useful for filling small holes and connecting disjoint objects.
- Opening: Erosion followed by dilation. Removes small objects and smooths
contours. - Closing: Dilation followed by erosion. Fills small holes and gaps
in object boundaries.

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Applications: - Noise Reduction: Removes small noise using opening. -
Shape Analysis: Identifies and extracts specific shapes within an image. -
Object Extraction: Isolates objects from the background, useful in industrial
inspection and medical imaging. - Boundary Detection: Extracts boundaries
for further analysis or object counting.

5. Image Compression (15 marks)

Lossless Compression: - Techniques: Huffman Coding, Run-Length En-
coding, LZW. - Effectiveness: Compresses without losing any information.
Essential for applications where data integrity is crucial, like medical imaging
and archival storage.
Lossy Compression: - Techniques: JPEG, MPEG, Wavelet Compression. -
Effectiveness: Significantly reduces file size by discarding some information.
Suitable for applications like web images, streaming, and multimedia, where
some loss of quality is acceptable.
Trade-offs: - Lossless: Lower compression ratios, higher data fidelity. -
Lossy: Higher compression ratios, potential quality degradation.
Significance: Reduces storage requirements and transmission times, balancing
quality and size depending on the application.

6. Image Segmentation (15 marks)

Concept: - Divides an image into meaningful regions or objects, simplifying
analysis.
Methods: - Thresholding: Simple method based on intensity levels. Effec-
tive for high-contrast images. - Edge-Based Segmentation: Detects edges
using gradient methods (e.g., Sobel, Canny). Suitable for images with distinct
object boundaries. - Region-Based Segmentation: Groups pixels based on
similarity criteria (e.g., region growing, split and merge). - Clustering: Seg-
ments based on grouping pixels with similar features (e.g., k-means, mean shift).
Applications: - Medical Imaging: Identifies and isolates anatomical struc-
tures for diagnosis. - Object Recognition: Segments objects for recognition
in various fields, including robotics and surveillance. - Image Compression:
Segments regions for efficient encoding.
Significance: Facilitates focused analysis, recognition, and interpretation by
isolating regions of interest.

7. Fourier Transform in Image Enhancement (15 marks)

Role: - Converts spatial domain data to the frequency domain, enabling
frequency-based analysis and manipulation.

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Applications: - Filtering: Enhances or suppresses specific frequencies. Low-
pass filters smooth images by removing high-frequency noise; high-pass filters
sharpen images by enhancing high-frequency details. - Pattern Recogni-
tion: Detects repetitive patterns by identifying specific frequency components.
- Compression: Reduces image size by retaining significant frequency compo-
nents while discarding less important ones.
Significance: Offers a powerful tool for analyzing and enhancing images based
on their frequency content, providing capabilities that are difficult to achieve in
the spatial domain.

8. Histogram Processing (15 marks)

Concept: - Involves modifying the histogram of an image to enhance its ap-
pearance.
Histogram Equalization: - Redistributes the intensity values to span the
entire range, enhancing contrast. Often used in medical imaging to improve
visibility of structures.
Effects: - Improves contrast in images, making details more visible. - Can
sometimes lead to over-enhancement or noise amplification.
Significance: Enhances visual quality, making images easier to analyze and
interpret, particularly useful in low-contrast conditions.

9. Image Sampling and Quantization (15 marks)

Sampling: - Converts continuous image data into discrete pixel values. Higher
sampling rates yield higher resolution images.
Quantization: - Converts continuous pixel values into discrete intensity levels.
Higher quantization levels yield more accurate intensity representation.
Impact: - Resolution: Affects the clarity and detail of the image. Higher
sampling and quantization rates improve image quality but increase data size.
- Artifacts: Insufficient sampling leads to aliasing; inadequate quantization
leads to false contouring.
Significance: Balances detail and storage requirements, crucial for accurate
digital representation and processing of images.

10. Morphological Operations (15 marks)

Skeletonization: - Reduces objects to their skeletal form while preserving their
structure.
Hole Filling: - Fills small holes within objects, useful in preparing images for
further analysis.

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Boundary Detection: - Extracts object boundaries by finding differences
between dilation and erosion.
Applications: - Shape Analysis: Extracts and analyzes object shapes. -
Preprocessing: Prepares images by smoothing contours and filling holes. -
Feature Extraction: Identifies critical features for further analysis.

11. Run-Length Encoding (RLE) in Image Compression (15 marks)

Concept: - Encodes consecutive runs of pixels with the same value. Effective
for images with large uniform areas.
Advantages: - Simple and efficient for certain types of images (e.g., binary
images, simple graphics).
Limitations: - Less effective for complex images with high variability, resulting
in low compression ratios.
Significance: Offers a straightforward compression method, particularly useful
in specific applications where images
have large areas of uniform color or intensity.

12. Edge Detection in Image Segmentation (15 marks)

Challenges: - Differentiating true edges from noise. - Handling variations in
intensity and texture.
Methods: - Sobel: Uses gradient magnitude to detect edges. Simple and effec-
tive for images with high contrast. - Canny: Multi-step process involving noise
reduction, gradient calculation, non-maximum suppression, and edge tracking.
More robust and accurate, particularly in noisy images.
Significance: Crucial for identifying object boundaries, enabling accurate seg-
mentation and further analysis in various applications, including medical imag-
ing and object recognition. ### 13. Spatial Filters in Image Enhancement (15
marks)
Smoothing Filters: - Purpose: Reduce noise and smooth the image. -
Types: - Average Filter: Replaces each pixel with the average of its neigh-
bors. Effective in reducing random noise but can blur edges. - Gaussian
Filter: Weights neighboring pixels according to a Gaussian function. Provides
better edge preservation compared to the average filter.
Sharpening Filters: - Purpose: Enhance edges and fine details. - Types:
- Laplacian Filter: Uses the second derivative to highlight regions of rapid
intensity change, emphasizing edges. - Unsharp Masking: Enhances edges by
subtracting a smoothed version of the image from the original.
Applications: - Smoothing: Useful in preprocessing steps to reduce noise be-
fore further analysis. - Sharpening: Enhances important features, improving

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visibility of details for tasks like object recognition and medical diagnosis.
Significance: Enhances image quality by reducing noise and highlighting im-
portant features, facilitating better interpretation and analysis.

14. Otsu’s Method for Image Thresholding (15 marks)

Principles: - Automatically determines the optimal threshold by maximiz-
ing the between-class variance, separating the image into foreground and back-
ground.
Effectiveness: - Advantages: Simple, non-parametric, and effective for bi-
modal histograms (histograms with two distinct peaks). - Limitations: Less
effective for images with unimodal histograms or significant overlap between
object and background intensities.
Applications: - Document Scanning: Separates text from the background.
- Medical Imaging: Isolates regions of interest, such as tumors from surround-
ing tissues.
Significance: Provides an effective, automated way to segment images, par-
ticularly useful in applications requiring robust thresholding without extensive
manual intervention.

15. Region-Based Segmentation (15 marks)

Concept: - Segments images by grouping neighboring pixels with similar prop-
erties, such as intensity, color, or texture.
Methods: - Region Growing: Starts from seed points and grows regions by
adding neighboring pixels that meet similarity criteria. - Region Splitting
and Merging: Splits the image into regions and merges adjacent regions that
meet similarity criteria.
Advantages: - Produces connected regions, reducing the risk of fragmented
segments. - Can incorporate high-level knowledge (e.g., shape, size).
Limitations: - Sensitive to the choice of seed points in region growing. -
Computationally intensive for large images.
Applications: - Medical Imaging: Segments organs or tissues based on in-
tensity and texture. - Remote Sensing: Identifies land use/land cover regions
in satellite images.
Significance: Provides a robust method for segmenting images into meaningful
regions, facilitating accurate analysis and interpretation.

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16. Ideal, Butterworth, and Gaussian Filters in Frequency Domain
(15 marks)
Ideal Filter: - Characteristics: Sharp cutoff, perfect pass, and stop regions.
- Frequency Response: Binary; passes frequencies within a cutoff and blocks
others completely. - Applications: Not used in practice due to ringing artifacts
from sharp transitions.
Butterworth Filter: - Characteristics: Smooth transition between pass
and stop regions, controlled by filter order. - Frequency Response: Gradual
roll-off, avoiding sharp transitions. - Applications: General-purpose filtering
where smooth transitions are preferred.
Gaussian Filter: - Characteristics: Smooth, bell-shaped curve, no ringing
artifacts. - Frequency Response: Exponentially decaying, smooth roll-off. -
Applications: Smoothing and noise reduction, where artifact-free results are
crucial.
Significance: Different filters offer various trade-offs between sharpness and
smoothness in frequency domain processing, allowing tailored solutions for spe-
cific enhancement tasks.

17. Connected Components in Morphological Image Processing (15

marks)
Concept: - Identifies and labels connected regions in a binary image, where all
pixels in a connected component share the same properties.
Process: - Labeling: Assigns unique labels to each connected component. -
Analysis: Measures properties like area, perimeter, and shape.
Applications: - Object Counting: Counts objects in an image, useful in
industrial inspection and biological studies. - Shape Analysis: Analyzes the
shape of connected regions for pattern recognition and classification. - Segmen-
tation: Separates connected regions for further analysis, such as in character
recognition.
Significance: Crucial for isolating and analyzing individual objects within an
image, enabling detailed analysis and recognition.

18. Noise Characterization in Image Restoration (15 marks)

Concept: - Understanding the nature of noise (e.g., Gaussian, salt-and-pepper)
in an image to apply appropriate restoration techniques.
Methods for Estimating Degradation: - Noise Modeling: Assumes sta-
tistical models for different noise types. - Degradation Function Estima-
tion: Uses observed data to estimate the degradation function, often through
techniques like blind deconvolution.

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Applications: - Medical Imaging: Reduces noise while preserving important
details for accurate diagnosis. - Astronomical Imaging: Enhances clarity by
removing noise caused by atmospheric interference.
Significance: Accurate noise characterization and degradation function estima-
tion are essential for effective image restoration, leading to clearer, more useful
images.

19. Challenges in Image Compression (15 marks)

Challenges: - Balancing Compression Ratio and Quality: High compres-
sion ratios can degrade image quality significantly. - Computational Com-
plexity: Advanced compression algorithms require significant computational
resources. - Artifact Management: Lossy compression can introduce arti-
facts like blocking and blurring.
Trade-offs in Lossy Compression: - Compression Ratio vs. Quality:
Higher compression ratios lead to more artifacts and loss of detail. - Storage
and Bandwidth: Efficient compression reduces storage and transmission costs
but may impact quality.
Significance: Effective image compression reduces data size, making storage
and transmission more efficient while maintaining acceptable image quality.

20. Coding Techniques in Image Compression (15 marks)

Run-Length Encoding (RLE): - Concept: Encodes consecutive runs of
the same pixel values. - Advantages: Simple and effective for images with
large uniform areas. - Limitations: Ineffective for complex images with high
variability.
Huffman Coding: - Concept: Uses variable-length codes for different pixel
values based on their frequencies. - Advantages: Provides optimal compression
for known probability distributions. - Limitations: Requires knowledge of
frequency distributions, less effective for small datasets.
Significance: Coding techniques are fundamental for reducing image data size,
each with specific strengths suited to different types of images.

21. Edge Linking in Image Segmentation (15 marks)

Concept: - Connects fragmented edge points to form coherent boundaries,
enhancing the edge map’s accuracy.
Methods: - Hough Transform: Detects lines by transforming edge points
into a parameter space and identifying lines’ intersections. - Edge Following:
Traces edges based on connectivity and continuity criteria, linking fragmented
segments.

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Applications: - Object Detection: Enhances boundary definition for accu-
rate object recognition. - Medical Imaging: Connects fragmented edges in
anatomical structures for clearer visualization.
Significance: Essential for producing continuous, accurate boundaries in edge
maps, improving segmentation quality and subsequent analysis.

22. Color-Feature Based Segmentation (15 marks)

Concept: - Uses color information to segment images, leveraging color space
transformations like RGB to HSV.
Methods: - Clustering: Groups pixels based on color similarity, using al-
gorithms like k-means. - Histogram-Based: Segments by analyzing color
histograms, identifying dominant colors.
Applications: - Object Recognition: Identifies objects based on color fea-
tures, useful in surveillance and robotics. - Medical Imaging: Segments dif-
ferent tissues based on color variations.
Comparison: - Accuracy: Often more accurate for color-rich images com-
pared to grayscale methods. - Computational Complexity: Higher compu-
tational cost due to processing additional color information.
Significance: Provides an effective means of segmentation for color images,
enhancing accuracy in applications where color is a key distinguishing feature.

23. Relationship Between Neighboring Pixels (15 marks)

Concept: - Neighboring pixels often share similar properties, crucial for various
image processing tasks.
Importance: - Edge Detection: Gradients between neighboring pixels indi-
cate edges. - Noise Removal: Smoothing filters rely on neighboring pixels to
reduce noise. - Segmentation: Connectivity and similarity between neighbors
help define regions.
Applications: - Smoothing Filters: Use local neighborhoods to reduce noise.
- Edge Detection Algorithms: Detect changes in intensity between neighbors.
- Region-Based Segmentation: Group pixels based on local similarity.
Significance: Understanding pixel relationships is foundational for many image
processing techniques, enabling effective noise reduction, edge detection, and
segmentation.

24. Smoothing and Sharpening Filters in Spatial Domain (15 marks)

Smoothing Filters: - Purpose: Reduce noise and smooth image details. -
Types: - Average Filter: Simple mean of neighboring pixels. - Gaussian
Filter: Weights neighbors by Gaussian function, preserving edges better.

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Effects: - Reduces noise but may blur important details. - Enhances overall
visual smoothness.
Sharpening Filters: - Purpose: Enhance image edges and fine details. -
Types: - Laplacian Filter: Uses second derivatives to
highlight edges. - Unsharp Masking: Subtracts a blurred version to enhance
details.
Effects: - Increases contrast at edges, making details more pronounced. - May
amplify noise if not used carefully.
Significance: Smoothing and sharpening filters enhance image quality by bal-
ancing noise reduction and detail enhancement, crucial for accurate analysis and
interpretation.

25. Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) in Image Processing (15

marks)
Principles: - Transforms spatial domain data into the frequency domain, de-
composing the image into sinusoidal components.
Applications: - Frequency Domain Filtering: Applies filters like low-pass,
high-pass to enhance or suppress specific frequency components. - Image Anal-
ysis: Identifies periodic patterns and structures within the image. - Compres-
sion: Retains significant frequency components, discarding less important ones
to reduce data size.
Significance: Provides a powerful tool for frequency-based analysis and en-
hancement, enabling tasks like noise reduction, pattern recognition, and efficient
compression.

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