Image Processing

Image Processing
 Introduction
• The field of digital image processing refers to processing digital images by means of
digital computer.
• Digital image is composed of a finite number of elements, each of which has a particular
location and value. These elements are called picture elements, image elements, pels and
pixels.
• Pixel is the term used most widely to denote the elements of digital image.
• An image is a two-dimensional function that represents a measure of some characteristic
such as brightness or color of a viewed scene. An image is a projection of a 3-D scene into
a 2D projection plane.
• An image may be defined as a two-dimensional function f(x,y), where x and y are spatial
(plane) coordinates, and the amplitude of f at any pair of coordinates (x,y) is called the
intensity of the image at that point.
 Example
• For example: The RGB color system, a color image consists of three (red, green and blue)
individual component images.
• For this reason many of the techniques developed for Monochrome images can be
extended to color images by processing the three component images individually.
• An image may be continuous with respect to the x- and y- coordinates and also in
amplitude.
• Converting such an image to digital form requires that the coordinates, as well as the
amplitude, be digitized.
 Application of Image Processing
Digital image processing has a broad spectrum of applications, such as
• Remote sensing via satellites and other spacecraft's
• Image transmission and storage for business applications
• Medical processing,
• RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging)
• SONAR(Sound Navigation and Ranging)
• Robotics and automated inspection of industrial parts.
Images acquired by satellites are useful in tracking of
• Earth resources;
• Geographical mapping;
• Prediction of agricultural crops,
• Urban growth and weather monitoring
Components of Image Processing
 Components of Image Processing
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Computer:
Computer used in the image processing system is the general purpose computer that is
used by us in our daily life.
4. Image Processing Software:
Image processing software is the software that includes all the mechanisms and
algorithms that are used in image processing system.
 Components of Image Processing
5. Mass Storage:
Mass storage stores the pixels of the images during the processing.
6. 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 Hard disk drive.
7. Image Display:
It includes the monitor or display screen that displays the processed images.
8. Network:
Network is the connection of all the above elements of the image processing
system.
Fundamental Steps in Digital Image Processing
 Fundamental Steps in Digital Image Processing
Image Acquisition
Image acquisition is the first step in digital image processing. In this step we get the
image in digital form. This is done using sensing materials like sensor strips and sensor
arrays and electromagnetic wave light source. The light source falls on an object and it
gets reflected or transmitted which gets captured by the sensing material. The sensor gives
the output image in voltage waveform in response to electric power being supplied to it.
Image Enhancement
Image enhancement is the manipulation of an image for its specific purpose and
objectives. This is majorly used in photo beautify applications. These are performed using
filters. The filters are used to minimise noise in an image. Each filter is used for a specific
situation. Correlation operation is done between filters and input image matrix to obtain
enhanced output image in . To simplify the process, we perform multiplication in the
frequency domain which gives the same result.
 Fundamental Steps in Digital Image Processing
Image Restoration
Like image enhancement, image restoration is related to improving an image. But image
enhancement is more of a subjective step where image restoration is more of an objective step.
Restoration is applied to a degraded image trying to recover back the original model. Here firstly
we try to estimate the degradation model and then find the restored image.
We can estimate the degradation by observation, experimentation and mathematical modelling.

Colour Image Processing

Colour image processing is motivated by the fact that using colour it is easier to classify and the
human eye can easily see thousands of colours than shades of black and white. Colour image
processing is divided into types - pseudo colour or reduced colour processing and full colour
processing. In pseudo colour processing, the grey scale is applied to one colour. It was used
earlier. Now-a-days, full colour processing is used for full colour sensors such as digital cameras
or colour scanners as the price of full colour sensor hardware is reduced significantly.
 Fundamental Steps in Digital Image Processing
Wavelets
Wavelets represent an image in various degrees of resolution. It is one of the members of the class of linear
transforms along with fourier, cosine, sine. Transforms are coefficients of linear expansion which
decompose a function into a weighted sum of orthogonal or biorthogonal basis functions. All these
transforms are reversible and inter convertible. All of them express the same information and energy. Hence
all are equivalent. All the transforms vary in only the manner how the information is represented.

Compression
Compression deals with decreasing the storage required to the image information or the bandwidth required
to transmit it. Compression technology has grown widely in this era. Many people are knowledgeable about
it by common image extension JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) which is a compressaion
technology. This is done by removing redundancy and irrelevant data. In the encoding process of
compression, the image goes through a series of stages - mapper, quantizer, symbol encoder.

Applications of image transforms are as follows:

• Fourier transform is used for Edge Detection.
• Discrete Cosine Transform is used for image compression.
 Fundamental Steps in Digital Image Processing
Morphological Image Processing
In morphological image processing, we try to understand the structure of the image. We
find the image components present in digital images. It is useful in representing and
describing the images' shape and structure. We find the boundary, hole, connected
components, convex hull, thinning, thickening, skeletons, etc. It is the fundamental step
for the upcoming stages.

Segmentation
Segmentation is based on extraction information from images on the basis of two
properties - similarity and discontinuity. For example, a sudden change in intensity value
represents an edge. Detection of isolation points, line detection, edge detection are some
of the tasks associated with segmentation.
 Fundamental Steps in Digital Image Processing
Feature Extraction
Feature extraction is the next step after segmentation. We extract features from images,
regions and boundaries. Example of feature extraction is corner detection. These features
should be independent and insensitive to variation of parameters such as scaling, rotation,
translation, illumination. Boundary features can be described by boundary feature
descriptors such as shape numbers and chain codes, fourier descriptors and statistical
moments.

Image Pattern Classification

In image pattern classification, we assign labels to images on the basis of features
extracted. For example, classify the image as a cat image. Classical methods for image
pattern classification are minimum-distance, correlation and Bayes classifier. Modern
methods for the same purpose use neural networks and deep learning models such as deep
convolutional neural networks. This method is ideal for image processing techniques.
 MCQ
1. What is Digital Image Processing?
a) It’s an application that alters digital videos
b) It’s a software that allows altering digital pictures
c) It’s a system that manipulates digital medias
d) It’s a machine that allows altering digital images

2. Which of the following process helps in Image enhancement?

a) Digital Image Processing
b) Analog Image Processing
c) Both a and b
d) None of the above

3. Among the following, functions that can be performed by digital image processing is?
a) Fast image storage and retrieval
b) Controlled viewing
c) Image reformatting
d) All of the above
 MCQ
4. Which of the following is an example of Digital Image Processing?
a) Computer Graphics
b) Pixels
c) Camera Mechanism
d) All of the mentioned

5. What are the categories of digital image processing?

a) Image Enhancement
b) Image Classification and Analysis
c) Image Transformation
d) All of the mentioned

6. What are the names of the various colour image processing categories?
a) Pseudo-color and Multi-color processing
b) Half-color and pseudo-color processing
c) Full-color and pseudo-color processing
d) Half-color and full-color processing
 MCQ
7. Which of the following statement describe the term pixel depth?
a) It is the number of units used to represent each pixel in RGB space
b) It is the number of mm used to represent each pixel in RGB space
c) It is the number of bytes used to represent each pixel in RGB space
d) It is the number of bits used to represent each pixel in RGB space

8. Which of the following is the first and foremost step in Image Processing?
a) Image acquisition
b) Segmentation
c) Image enhancement
d) Image restoration

9. Which of the following is the next step in image processing after compression?
a) Representation and description
b) Morphological processing
c) Segmentation
d) Wavelets
 MCQ
10. ___________ determines the quality of a digital image.
a) The discrete gray levels
b) The number of samples
c) discrete gray levels & number of samples
d) None of the mentioned

11. Image processing involves how many steps?

a) 7
b) 8
c) 13
d) 10

12. Which of the following is the role played by segmentation in image processing?
a) Deals with property in which images are subdivided successively into smaller regions
b) Deals with partitioning an image into its constituent parts or objects
c) Deals with extracting attributes that result in some quantitative information of interest
d) Deals with techniques for reducing the storage required saving an image, or the bandwidth required
transmitting it
 Assignment

1. What is image processing? Write down the applications of image

processing.
2. Explain the different components of image processing.
3. Describe the fundamental steps of image processing.