Image and Its Properties 41
(a) Volume rendering (b) Volume rendering with
with incorrect voxel size. correct voxel size.
The 3D is elongated in
the z-direction.
FIGURE 3.3: An example of volume rendering with correct and incor-
rect voxel size.
3.2.3 Image Histogram
A histogram is a graphical depiction of the distribution of pixel
value in an image. The image in Figure 3.4 is a histogram of an image.
The x-axis is the pixel value and the y-axis is the frequency or the
number of pixels with the given pixel value. In the case of an integer-
based image such as JPEG, whose values span [0, 255], the number of
values in the x-axis will be 256. Each of these 256 values is referred to
as a “bin.” Several bins can also be used in the x-axis. In the case of
images containing floating-point values, the bins will have a range of
values.
Histograms are a useful tool in determining the quality of the image.
A few observations can be made in Figure 3.4:
1. The left side of the histogram corresponds to lower pixel values.
Hence if the frequency at lower pixel values is very high, it indi-
cates that some of the pixels might be missing from that end,
42 Image Processing and Acquisition using Python
FIGURE 3.4: An example of a histogram.
i.e., there are values farther left of the first pixel that were not
recorded in the image.
2. An ideal histogram should have close to zero frequency for the
lower pixel values.
3. The right side of the histogram corresponds to higher pixel values.
Hence, if the frequency at higher pixel values is very high, it
indicates saturation, i.e., there might be some pixels to the right
of the highest value that were never recorded.
4. An ideal histogram should have close to zero frequency for the
higher pixel values.
5. The above histogram is bi-modal. The trough between the two
peaks is the pixel value that can be used for segmentation by
thresholding. But not all images have bi-modal histograms; hence
there are many techniques for segmentation using histograms. We
will discuss some of these techniques in Chapter 8, “Segmenta-
tion.”
3.2.4 Window and Level
The human eye can view a large range of intensity values, while
modern displays are severely limited in their capabilities.