College of Engineering and Technology

School of Computing and Informatics

Computer Vision and Image Processing (CoSc4113)

CHAPTER ONE: Introduction to Computer Vision and
Image Processing

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 OUTLINES
❖What is a computer vision?
❖What is image?
❖ Related fields in CV
❖ Computer Vision Vs image processing
❖ Application of CV and IP

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 WHAT IS VISION?
▪“Vision is a process that produces, from images of the
external world, a description that is useful to the viewer and
not cluttered with irrelevant information.”(Marr and Nishihara,
1978)
▪“Computer vision is the science and technology of machines
that see. Computer vision is concerned with the theory and
technology for building artificial systems that obtain
information from images or multi-dimensional data.
”(Wikipedia)
▪Computer Vision and Machine Learning have played together
decisive roles in the development of a variety of
image-based applications within the last decade.
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▪e.g., various services provided by Google, Facebook,
Microsoft, Snapchat.
▪This time, the vision-based technology has transformed from
just a sensing modality to intelligent computing systems
which can understand the real world.

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 WHAT IS COMPUTER VISION?
▪Is a field of artificial intelligence (AI) that enables computers and
systems to derive meaningful information from digital images, videos
and other visual inputs — and take actions or make recommendations
based on that information.

▪AI enables computers to think, computer vision enables them to see,

observe and understand

▪Humans use their eyes and their brains to see and understand the 3D
world around them. Machine uses camera and different sensors.

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 CONT’D…

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▪Simply Computer Vision is about:
=> Understanding the content of images and videos.

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 WHAT IS IMAGE?
▪An image is a two-dimensional function f(x,y), where x and y are
the spatial (plane) coordinates, and the amplitude of f at any
pair of coordinates (x,y) is called the intensity of the image at
that level.

▪If x,y and the amplitude values of f are finite and discrete
quantities, we call the image a digital image.

▪A digital image is composed of a finite number of elements

called pixels, each of which has a particular location and value.

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 DIGITAL IMAGE
▪Is a representation of a real image as a set of numbers that
can be stored and handled by a digital computer.
▪In order to translate the image into numbers, it is divided
into small areas called pixels (picture elements).
▪For each pixel, the imaging device records a number, or a
small set of numbers, that describe some property of this
pixel.
✔ brightness (the intensity of the light)
✔ Its color

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 DIGITAL IMAGE PROCESSING
▪Deals with manipulation of digital images through a digital
computer.

▪Focuses on developing a computer system that is able to

perform processing on an image.

▪Pixel is the smallest unit of an image

▪Each pixel consists of three color namely Red, Green and

Blue.

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▪Digital Image Processing (DIP) has two principal
application areas:
o Improvement of pictorial information for human
interpretation
oProcessing of image data for storage, transmission
and representation for autonomous machine
perception.

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▪Processing of digital images by means of computer, it
covers three categories

1 2 3
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, understanding,
sharpening segmentation autonomous navigation

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 Computer Vision Vs Image
Processing

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 CONT’D…
▪Image processing studies image to image transformation. The
input and output of image processing are both images. E.g.
Adobe Photoshop.
▪Computer vision is the construction of explicit, meaningful
descriptions of physical objects from their image. The output
of computer vision is a description or an interpretation of
structures in 3D scene.

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 RELATED FIELDS IN CV
▪It needs knowledge from the following fields in order to
understand and stimulate the operation of human vision system.
▪Computer Science

▪ Electrical Engineering

▪ Mathematics

▪ Physiology

▪ Biology

▪ Cognitive Science

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 APPLICATION OF CV AND IP

IP CV
▪Restoration and Enhancement ▪Oil and natural gas
▪Digital cinema ▪Video surveillance
▪Image transformation ▪Healthcare
▪Color processing ▪Agriculture
▪Video processing ▪Military
▪Industry
▪Automotive

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 D!
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