Digital Image Processing

● Image acquisition
Last Lecture ○
○
Single sensor
In-line sensor
○ Sensor array
● Sampling and quantization.
Digital Image Acquisition Process
2D Imaging Sensor
 Image Acquisition

FIGURE: CCD
 Sampling

□sampling = the spacing of discrete values in the domain of a

signal.
□sampling-rate = how many samples are taken per unit of
each dimension. e.g.,samples per second, frames per second
 Quantization

□Quantization = spacing of discrete values in the

range of a signal.
□Usually thought of as the number of bits per
sample of the signal.
e.g., 1, 8, 24 bit images, 16-bit audio.
Sampling and Quantization
Example of Digital Image
Sampling Effect
Sampling Effect
Chapter 2: Digital Image Fundamentals

Bilinear Interpolation:
Quantization Effect
 Quantization Effect

□if the gray scale is not

enough, the smooth area will
be affected.
□False contouring can occur
on the smooth area which has
fine gray scales.
 Image Formation Model

□Image refers to a 2D light-intensity function,

f(x,y)
□Amplitude of f at spatial coordinates (x,y)
gives the intensity (brightness) of the image
at that point.
□Light is a form of energy thus f(x,y) must be
nonzero and finite.
0 < f(x,y) < ∞
 Illumination and Reflectance

□The basic nature of f(x,y) may be

characterized by 2 components:
the amount of source light incident on
the scene being viewed
□ Illumination, i(x,y)
the amount of light reflected by the
objects in the scene
□ Reflectance, r(x,y)
 Illumination and Reflectance

f(x,y) = i(x,y)r(x,y)
□i(x,y):
determined by the nature of the light source
bounded by
0 < i(x,y) < ∞
□r(x,y) :
determined by the nature of the objects
bounded by
0 < r(x,y) < 1
 Gray Level

□We call the intensity of a monochrome image f at

coordinate (x,y) the gray level (l) of the image at that
point.
▪l lies in the range Lmin ≤ l ≤ Lmax
▪Lmin and Lmax are positive and finite.
▪Gray scale = [Lmin, Lmax]
▪Common practice: Shift the interval to [0, L-1]
▪0 = black , L-1 = white
□The range of values spanned by the gray scale is
referred to informally as the dynamic range
 Resolution

□Resolution (how much you can see the detail of the

image) depends on sampling and gray levels.
□The bigger the sampling rate (M×N) and the
gray scale level (k), the better the approximation
of the digitized image from the original.
▪But the size of the image gets bigger

□Due to storage and quantizing hardware

considerations, the number of intensity levels (L)
typically is an integer power of 2:
Space Required for an Image
Digital image representation
● Surface plot
● As plot/graph with spatial location
as two axes and third axis being the
intensities at that specific spatial
coordinates.
● Easily infer the structure,
● For complex images its very difficult to
interpret from such plot.

3
Digital image representation
● Visual Intensity array.
● more common.
● Intensity of each point is proportional to
the value of f at that point.
● Eg-only three equally spaced intensity
values.
● Normalized to [0,1],values can be either
0, 0.5, 1.
● A monitor /printer converts these values
to either black, gray or white
respectively.

4
 Digital image representation
● Displaying the numerical values of
as a array.
● For large images ,complete array values
to be displayed is tedious and nothing
much can be inferred from it.
● Only parts of the image are printed as
numerical values.

5
● Continuous image to Digital image. ● Terms - Dynamic range.
● ● Ratio of maximum measurable intensity
● Matrix representation- M rows & N to the min detectable intensity level.
columns. ● Saturation and noise.
● For Image digitization –values of M,N ● Highest value beyond which all intensity
and L (the number of discrete intensity values are clipped.
levels) need to be chosen.
● M,N –positive integers.
● L value- depends on digital storage and
quantizing hardware considerations
● L is taken as integer power of 2

6
7
 Image Contrast
● Difference in intensity between the
highest and lowest intensity level in an
image.
● Contrast ratio – highest/lowest intensity
level in an image.
● Image with high dynamic range→ expect
high contrast.
● Image with low dynamic range→ dull
washed out gray look.

K – bit image

8
 Spatial resolution
● Spatial resolution :
○ measure of smallest observable detail in an image.
○ Line pairs per unit distance
○ Pixel (dots) per unit distance.
● dpi (dots per inch) unit in printing and publishing industry.
○ Newspaper -75dpi
○ Magazines - 133 dpi
○ Glossy brochure -175dpi
● Higher Image size means better image ??
○ 1024x1024 image vs 512x512

9
● Image size alone doesn’t mean ,it is a better image. The spatial resolution has to be considered also.

10
 Understanding resolution
● Pixels
● The amount of these pixels and the way
they are distributed are the two factors
that you need to consider to understand
resolution.
● Pixel count
● Pixel density
● “a rubber band, you can stretch it or
shrink it but you’re not changing the
composition of the band, you’re not
adding or cutting any of the rubber.”
Effect of reducing spatial
resolution
● 1250,300,150 and 72 dpi.
● Slight distortion in the large black
needle in the first two images.
● As the resolution reduces the
difference in quality or degradation of
the image is more visible.

15
 Intensity resolution
● Intensity resolution : Smallest observable change in intensity level.
● Number of bits used to quantize intensity.
● The number of intensity levels is an integer power of 2 .
● Image that is quantized into 256 levels has 8 bit intensity resolution.
● Most common no of bits is 8 bit.
● Capturing small levels of brightness : intensity resolution high.
● For a Intensity profile
● Coarse discretization ,smooth variation /transitions will not be detected properly.

16
Effect of intensity resolution reduction

18
 Ǫuantity equals quality ??
● People think that megapixels equal quality
● On top of the quantity you should also consider the depth of the pixels, this is what determines
the amount of tonal values that your image will have.
● For example,
○ a 2-bit depth can store only black, white and two shades of grey,
○ With an 8-bit photo (2 to the power of 8 = 256) you’ll have 256 tones.
 Role of image size

● Higher resolution means a sharper image??

● True only if all images were the same size. But hardly it’s the case.
● Quality of image depends –density and image size.
● Pixels in a images – fixed.
● If we try to change physical size of image- changes number of pixels per inch.→ lower dpi.
Reducing number of pixels
 Typesof images
● Indexed Images
● An indexed image consists of a data matrix, X, and a colormap matrix, map. map is an m-by-3 array of class double
containing floating-point values in the range [0, 1].
● Each row of map specifies the red, green, and blue components of a single color.
● An indexed image uses “direct mapping” of pixel values to colormap values.
● The color of each image pixel is determined by using the corresponding value of X as an index into map. Values of X
therefore must be integers. The value 1 points to the first row in map, the value 2 points to the second row, and so on
 Grayscale (Intensity) Images
● A grayscale image, sometimes referred
to as an intensity image, is a data matrix
I whose values represent intensities
within some range.
● A grayscale image is represented as a
single matrix, with each element of the
matrix corresponding to one image
pixel.
 RGB(Truecolor) Images
● An RGB image, sometimes referred to as
a truecolor image, is stored as an m-by-
n-by-3 data array that defines red,
green, and blue color components for
each individual pixel.
● The color of each pixel is determined by
the combination of the red, green, and
blue intensities stored in each color
plane at the pixel's location.