Chapter one

Introduction to computer vision

and image processing

Wachemo University(Durame Campus)

Department of Computer Science
Course :Computer Vision and Image Processing
Mr. Habtamu B.(2025)

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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
 Different Image processing examples
 Fundamental steps in image processing

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 What is a computer vision?
 Computer vision is a field of artificial intelligence that
trains computer to interpret and understand the visual world.
 It is a field of AI enabling computers to derive information
from images , videos and other inputs.
 There are different type of computer vision including of
image segmentation ,object detection, image classification
and etc.
 The main purpose of artificial vision is a scientific
discipline that aims to enable computer to achieve the same
capacity.

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 What is a computer vision?
• What Is Computer Vision?
Computer vision is a field of artificial intelligence that
applies machine learning to images and videos to
understand media and make decisions about them.
With computer vision, we can, in a sense, give vision
to software and technology.
• What Is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer
science concerned with building machines capable of
performing tasks that typically require human
intelligence.
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 What is a computer vision?

How Does Computer Vision Work?

• Computer vision programs use a combination of
techniques to process raw images and turn them into
usable data and insights.
• While images may seem like a complex input, we can
decompose them into raw numbers.
• Images are really just a combination of individual
pixels and each pixel can be represented by a number
(grayscale) or combination of numbers such as (255, 0,
0, RGB).

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The basis for much computer vision work is 2D
images, as shown below.

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 Cont…
• Why Is Computer Vision Important?
• Computer vision has been around since as early as the
1950s and continues to be a popular field of research
with many applications.
• The importance of computer vision comes from the
increasing need for computers to be able to
understand the human environment.
• To understand the environment, it helps if computers
can see what we do, which means representing the
sense of human vision.
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 Cont…
Computer Vision Examples
• Computer vision is often used in everyday life and its applications
range from simple to very complex.
• Optical character recognition (OCR) was one of the most widespread
applications of computer vision.
• A more recent application, which is still under development and will
play a big role in the future of transportation, is object recognition.
• In object recognition an algorithm takes an input image and searches
for a set of objects within the image, drawing boundaries around the
object and labeling it.
• This application is critical in self-driving cars which need to quickly
identify its surroundings in order to decide on the best course of
action.
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 Digital Image Definition
• An image can be defined as a two-dimensional
function f(x,y)
• x,y: Spatial coordinate
• F: the amplitude of any pair of coordinate x,y,
which is called the intensity or gray level of
the image at that point.
• x,y and f, are all finite and discrete quantities.

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 Digital Image Definition
Digital Image Processing
Digital Image Processing (DIP) has two principal
application areas:
 improvement of pictorial information for human
interpretation.
 processing of image data for storage, transmission
and representation for autonomous machine
perception.

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 Image Processing Fields
• Computer Graphics: The creation of images

• Image Processing: Enhancement or other

manipulation of the image

• Computer Vision: Analysis of the image

content

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 Image Processing Fields
Sometimes, Image Processing is defined as “a discipline
in which both the input and output of a process are
images

But, according to this classification, trivial tasks of

computing the average intensity of an image would not be
considered an image processing operation

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 Related fields in computer vision
• The fields most closely related to computer
vision are image processing, image analysis
and machine vision

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 Computer Vision Vs image processing
Image processing Computer Vision
The input and output are images. The input can be an image or a
video.
The output can be a label or a
bounding box.
Changes the input’s properties. Usually, it doesn’t change the
input’s properties.
Doesn’t interpret an image Extracts useful information from
the input.
Often the first step of an We use it after the image-
application. processing stage.

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 Application of CV and IP

 Computer Vision Applications

• Facial recognition
• Self-driving cars
• Robotic automation
• Medical anomaly detection
• Sports performance analysis
• Manufacturing fault detection
• Agricultural monitoring
• Plant species classification
• Text parsing
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 Application of CV and IP
• Applications of Digital Image Processing
• Almost in every field, digital image processing puts a live effect
on things and is growing with time to time and with new
technologies.
1) Image sharpening and restoration
• It refers to the process in which we can modify the look and feel
of an image. It includes conversion, sharpening, blurring,
detecting edges, retrieval, and recognition of images.
2) Medical Field
• There are several applications under medical field which depends
on the functioning of digital image processing.
Gamma-ray imaging, PET scan, X-Ray Imaging, Medical CT
scan, UV imaging
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 Application of CV and IP
3) Robot vision
• There are several robotic machines which work on the digital image
processing. Through image processing technique robot finds their
ways.
4) Pattern recognition
• It involves the study of image processing, it is also combined with
artificial intelligence such that computer-aided diagnosis,
handwriting recognition and images recognition can be easily
implemented.
5) Video processing
• A collection of frames or pictures are arranged in such a way that it
makes the fast movement of pictures. It involves frame rate
conversion, motion detection, reduction of noise and colour space
conversion etc.
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 Different Image processing examples

Examples of image processing

Rescaling Image (Digital Zoom)
Correcting Lighting.
Detecting Edges.
Mathematical Morphology.
Evaluation and Ranking of Segmentation Algorithms.

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 Fundamental Steps in Digital Image Processing:

Outputs of these processes generally are image attributes

Outputs of these processes generally are images

Wavelets &
Colour Image Image Morphological
Multiresolution
Processing Compression Processing
processing

Image
Restoration
Segmentation

Image Knowledge Base

Enhancement Representation
& Description

Image
Acquisition Object
Recognition

Problem Domain 19
 Fundamental Steps in DIP:
(Description)
Step 1: Image Acquisition
The image is captured by a sensor (eg.
Camera), and digitized if the output of the
camera or sensor is not already in digital form,
using analogue-to-digital convertor

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 Fundamental Steps in DIP:
(Description)
Step 2: Image Enhancement
The process of manipulating an image so that the
result is more suitable than the original for
specific applications.

The idea behind enhancement techniques is to

bring out details that are hidden, or simple to
highlight certain features of interest in an image.

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 Fundamental Steps in DIP:
(Description)
Step 3: Image Restoration
- Improving the appearance of an image

- Tend to be mathematical or probabilistic models.

Enhancement, on the other hand, is based on
human subjective preferences regarding what
constitutes a “good” enhancement result.

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 Fundamental Steps in DIP:
(Description)
Step 4: Colour Image Processing
Use the colour of the image to extract features
of interest in an image

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 Fundamental Steps in DIP:
(Description)
Step 5: Wavelets
Are the foundation of representing images in
various degrees of resolution. It is used for
image data compression.

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 Fundamental Steps in DIP:
(Description)
Step 6: Compression
Techniques for reducing the storage required
to save an image or the bandwidth required to
transmit it.

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 Fundamental Steps in DIP:
(Description)
Step 7: Morphological Processing
Tools for extracting image components that are
useful in the representation and description of
shape.
In this step, there would be a transition from
processes that output images, to processes that
output image attributes.

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 Fundamental Steps in DIP:
(Description)
Step 8: Image Segmentation
Segmentation procedures partition an image
into its constituent parts or objects.

Important Tip: The more accurate the

segmentation, the more likely recognition is
to succeed.

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 Fundamental Steps in DIP:
(Description)
Step 9: Representation and Description
- Representation: Make a decision whether the data should
be represented as a boundary or as a complete region. It is
almost always follows the output of a segmentation stage.
- Boundary Representation: Focus on external shape
characteristics, such as corners and inflections
- Region Representation: Focus on internal properties,
such as texture or skeleton shape

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 Fundamental Steps in DIP:
(Description)
Step 9: Representation and Description
- Choosing a representation is only part of the solution
for transforming raw data into a form suitable for
subsequent computer processing (mainly recognition)
- Description: also called, feature selection, deals with
extracting attributes that result in some information of
interest.

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 Fundamental Steps in DIP:
(Description)
Step 9: Recognition and Interpretation
Recognition: the process that assigns label to
an object based on the information provided
by its description.

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 Fundamental Steps in DIP:
(Description)
Step 10: Knowledge Base
Knowledge about a problem domain is coded
into an image processing system in the form of
a knowledge database.

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Thank You !!!

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