Image Fundamentals

What is an image?
• An image is a 2D function I(x,y), where x and y
are spatial coordinates and the value of I at any
pair of coordinates (x,y) is called the intensity or
gray level.

• When (x,y) and the amplitude values of I all are

finite and discrete then the image is a Digital
Image.

Digital Image is a 2D array of numbers

representing the sampled version of an image
Pixel
- The images are defined over a grid. Each
grid location is called as picture elements or
most popularly as Pixel.

What is Digital Image Processing (DIP)?

DIP is manipulation of an image to improve or
change some qualities of the image. DIP
encompasses all the various operations done
through a digital processor which can be
applied to image data.
Why image processing?
• Two goals of Image Processing:
- Improvement of pictorial information for human
interpretation.
OR
- Processing of scene data for automatic machine
perception

• Image Processing may be considered as the

preprocessing for a Pattern Recognition System
Related Areas of Image Processing

™Image Processing:
Input: Image –---- Output: Image

™Image Analysis/Understanding:
Input: Image –---- Output: Measurements

™Computer Vision:
Input: Image –---- Output: High-level
description
 Aspects of image processing

Processing of image

Low level Mid level High level

Emulation of Human
Quality improvement Feature/attribute extraction
Vision

Image Image Computer

Processing Processing Vision
 Black & White and Colour Images
• Black & white images are depicted by gray levels,
they don’t have any colour information.

• A (digital) colour image is a digital image that

includes colour information for each pixel.

- A colour image is typically represented by BIT

depth. With a 24-BIT image, the BITs are often
divided into three groupings: 8 for Red, 8 for Green,
and 8 for Blue. Combinations of those bits are used
to represent other composite colours. A 24-BIT
image offers 16.7 million different colour values.
 Image Enhancement
• The purpose of image enhancement is to
process an image so that the result is more
suitable than the original image for a specific
application
Two approaches of image enhancement:
• Spatial domain methods
- direct manipulation of pixels
• Frequency domain methods
- based on modifying the Fourier transform
 Spatial Domain Methods
• In spatial domain image enhancement
methods, manipulations are done directly
on the pixels
g ( x , y ) = T [ f ( x , y )]
Here,
f(x,y) is the input image
T is the operator
g(x,y) is the processed (enhanced) image
 Image enhancement in spatial
domain
• Two methods of processing in spatial domain:
- Point processing
s=T(r)
Enhancement at any point depends only on
the gray level of that point
- Mask processing
Processing is done using gray levels of pixel
neighbourhood
 Image enhancement in spatial
domain
• Point processing
- When the neighbourhood is of size 1 x 1 (that is
a single pixel) then g depends only on the value
of f at (x,y) and T becomes a gray-level (or
intensity or mapping) transformation function as:
s=T(r)
r & s are the gray levels of f(x,y) and g(x,y) at (x,y)
- Point processing methods are based only on the
intensity of single pixels
 Image enhancement in spatial
domain
• Contrast stretching
- A simple method of image enhancement
using point processing
 Image enhancement in spatial
domain
• Mask:
Mask is small 2-D array of pixels. It is also
called as kernel or template or window or
filter
• Mask processing or filtering:
- Processing is done using mask co-efficients
A 3x3 Mask
p
 Image enhancement in spatial
domain

A neighbourhood about (x,y) is defined by using a square (or

rectangular) sub-image area centered at (x,y)
 Some Basic Gray Level
Transformations
• Image negatives
• Log Transformations
• Power Law Transformations
• Piecewise-Linear Transformation
Functions:
• Contrast stretching
• Gray-level slicing
• Bit-plane slicing
 Some Basic Gray Level
Transformations

Linear: Negative, Identity

Logarithmic: Log, Inverse Log
Power-Law: nth power, nth root
 Image Negatives
• Function reverses the order from black to white
so that the intensity of the output image
decreases as the intensity of the input increases.

• The negative of an image with gray levels in the

range [0,L-1] is obtained by using the negative
transformation given as:
s=(L-1)-r

- Image negatives are used mainly in medical

images and to produce slides of the screen
 Image Negatives
• Image negative function:
s=(L-1)-r
Output gray
L-1

levels

0 L-1 input gray levels

Image enhancement in spatial
domain
 Log Transformations
s = c log(1+r)
c is a constant
&0≤r

• Compresses the dynamic range of images

with large variations in pixel values
Image enhancement in spatial
domain
 Power-Law Transformations
It is has the basic form as
γ
s = cr
c & γ are positive constants
To account an offset
s = c(r + ε ) γ

ε is the offset
• Gamma correction:
- It is a process used to correct power-law
response phenomena
Power-Law Transformations

γ=c=1: identity
Gamma correction in CRT
Application of Power-Law
Transformations
Piecewise-Linear Transformation
• Contrast Stretching
- To increase the dynamic range of the gray levels
in the image being processed
Contrast Stretching
 Contrast Stretching
• The locations of (r1,s1) and (r2,s2) guides
the characteristics of the transformation
function

– If r1= s1 and r2= s2 the transformation is a

linear function and produces no changes

– If r1=r2, s1=0 and s2=L-1, the transformation

becomes a thresholding function that results a
binary image (that has two gray levels)
 Contrast Stretching
-Intermediate values of (r1,s1) and (r2,s2)
produce various degrees of spread in the
gray levels of the output image, thus
affecting its contrast.

– Generally, it is assumed that

r1≤r2
& s1≤s2
 Gray-Level Slicing
• Used to highlight a specific range of gray
levels in an image

One approach is to
display a high value for all
gray levels in the range of
interest and a low value
for all other gray levels, so
it produces binary image
 Gray-Level Slicing
– The second approach is to brighten the desired
range of gray levels but to preserve the
background and gray-level tonalities in the
image
Image enhancement in spatial
domain
 BIT-Plane Slicing
• To highlight the contribution made to the total image
appearance by specific BIT in the image

– In a gray level image of 8-BIT, each pixel is

represented by 8 BITs. So, it can be considered
that the image is composed of eight 1-BIT plan
(BIT plan 0 to BIT plan 7)

– BIT plane 0 contains the least significant BIT

(LSB) and plane 7 contains the most significant
BIT (MSB)
 BIT-Plane Slicing
– The higher order BITs (top four) contain the
majority of visually significant data. The other BIT
planes contribute the more subtle details in the
image
– Binary image can be obtained from BIT plan
slicing. Plane 7 corresponds exactly with an image
thresholded at gray level 128
That is
- Pixel values between 0 to 127 → 0
- Pixel values between 128 to 255 → 1
BIT Plan Representation of an
Image
BIT Plan Slicing of an Image
BIT Plan Slicing of an Image
 Image enhancement in spatial
domain
Histogram: The plot of gray level (X-axis) versus number of
pixels with that gray level (Y-axis) is called a histogram

It is a discrete function h(l)=nl

Where l ∈ [0, L-1] is a gray value
nl = no. of pixels in the image having gray level l

Normalized Histogram:
It gives an estimate of the probability of occurrence of gray
level l
Normalized histogram p(l)=nl/n
Where n=total number of pixels in an image
 Image enhancement in spatial
domain
• Histogram transformation

Dark image Bright image

Low-contrast image High contrast image

 Histogram Processing
• The shape of the histogram of an image does
provide useful information about the possibility
for contrast enhancement

Types of processing:
- Histogram equalization
- Histogram matching (specification)
- Local enhancement
- Use of Histogram statistics for image
enhancement
 Histogram Equalization
• For gray levels that take on discrete values, we
deal with probabilities: p(rk)=nk/n

• The technique used for obtaining a uniform

histogram is known as histogram equalization (or
histogram linearization)

• Histogram equalization results are similar to

contrast stretching but offer the advantage of full
automation
 Histogram equalization
• Expand pixels in peaks over a wider range of
gray-levels

• “Squeeze” low plans pixels into a narrower

range of gray levels

• Flat histogram.
 Histogram equalization
• To equalize the histogram, probabilities of
occurrences of the gray levels in the image are
taken into account.
- That is the normalized histogram is used to
spread the histogram throughout the range of
the gray level of the image.

• The transformation is
k k nj
s k = T ( rk ) = ∑ P (r ) = ∑
j=0
r j
j=0 n
Histogram equalization
 Histogram matching/specification
• Histogram equalization does not allow interactive
image enhancement and generates only one result
that is an approximation to a uniform histogram

• Sometimes though, particular histogram shapes are

specified to highlight certain gray-level ranges

- The method used to generate a processed image

that has a specified histogram is called
histogram matching or histogram specification
 Histogram matching/specification
• The procedure for histogram-specification based
enhancement is:
1. Obtain the histogram of the given image

2. Use the following equation to pre-compute a

mapped level sk for each level of rk
k k nj
sk = T ( rk ) = ∑ Pr ( r j ) = ∑
j =0 j =0 n
 Histogram matching/specification
3. Obtain the transformation function G from the given pz(z)
using k k nj
vk = G ( zk ) = ∑ pz ( zi ) = sk ≈ ∑
i =0 j =0 n
4. Pre-compute zk for each value of sk using iterative process

5. For each pixel in the original image, if the value of that pixel is
rk, map this value to its corresponding level sk, then map level
sk into final level zk
- In these mappings the pre-computed values from step (2) and
step (4) are used
z =G −1
(s) ⇒ z = G −1
⎡⎣T ( r ) ⎤⎦
 Histogram matching/specification
• The principal difficulty in applying the histogram
specification method to image enhancement lies in
being able to construct a meaningful histogram
So,
- Either a particular probability density function (such
as a Gaussian density) is specified and then a
histogram is formed by digitizing the given function

- Or a histogram shape is specified on a graphic

device and then is fed into the processor executing
the histogram specification algorithm.
Histogram matching/specification
Histogram equalization
Histogram equalization
Histogram equalization
 Local enhancement
• Local enhancement using histogram is done
basically for two purposes:

- When it is necessary to enhance details

over small areas in an image

- To devise transformation functions based

on the gray-level distribution in the
neighbourhood of every pixel in the image
 Local enhancement
• The procedure is:

- Define a square (or rectangular)

neighbourhood and move the center of this
area from pixel to pixel

- At each location, the histogram of the points

in the neighbourhood is computed and
either a histogram equalization or histogram
specification transformation function is
obtained
 Local enhancement
- This function is finally used to map the
gray level of the pixel centered in the
neighbourhood

- The centre of the neighbourhood region is

then moved to an adjacent pixel location
and the procedure is repeated
Local enhancement
Local enhancement
Local enhancement
 Image enhancement using
Arithmetic/Logic operations
• Logical
- AND, OR, NOT – functionally complete
- In conjunction with morphological operations

• Arithmetic
- Subtraction/Addition
- Multiplication / Division (as multiplication of
reciprocal)
- May use multiplication to implement gray-level
masks
Logical operations
 Image Subtraction
• Image subtraction of a mask from an image
is given as:
g ( x, y ) = f ( x, y ) − h ( x, y )
Where, f(x,y) is the image
h(x,y) is the image mask

• Image subtraction is used in medical

imaging, eg. Mask mode radiography
 Image subtraction
• Mask mode radiography
- h(x,y) is the mask, f(x,y) is image taken after
injecting the contrast medium
 Image subtraction
• Image subtraction is g(x, y) = f (x, y) − h(x, y)
 Image averaging
• A noisy image can be modeled as:
g(x,y)=f(x,y)+η(x,y)
Where, f(x,y) is the original image
η(x,y) is the noise

Averaging k different noisy images:

M
1
g ( x, y ) =
M
∑ g ( x, y )
i =1
i
 Image Averaging
• As K increases, the variability of the pixel
values at each location decreases

- This means that g(x,y) approaches f(x,y) as

the number of noisy images used in the
averaging process increases.

• Registering of the images is necessary to

avoid blurring in the output image.
Image Averaging
Image Averaging
 Spatial Filtering
• Use of spatial masks for image processing
(spatial filters)
p

• Linear and nonlinear filters

(a 3x3 mask)

• Low-pass filters eliminate or attenuate

high frequency components in the
frequency domain (sharp image details),
and result in image blurring
 Spatial Filtering
• High-pass filters attenuate or eliminate
low-frequency components (resulting in
sharpening edges and other sharp details)

• Band-pass filters remove selected

frequency regions between low and high
frequencies (for image restoration, not
enhancement)
 Spatial filtering
• Different filters can be designed to do the
following:

- Blurring / Smoothing
- Sharpening
- Edge Detection

- All these effects can be achieved using

different coefficients in the mask
 Spatial filtering
• Blurring / Smoothing
- (Sometimes also referred to as averaging or
lowpass-filtering)

~ Average the values of the centre pixel and its

neighbours

Purposes:
- Reduction of ‘irrelevant’ details
- Noise reduction
- Reduction of ‘false contours’ (e.g. produced by
zooming)
 Spatial filtering
• Sharpening
- Used to highlight fine detail in an image
- Or to enhance detail that has been blurred

• Edge Detection
Purposes:
- Pre-processing
- Sharpening
 Spatial filtering
• A mask of a fixed size and having constant
weight in its every location is used to do
the filtering
• The mask is moved from point to point on
the image
• At each point (x,y), the response of the
filter at that point is calculated using a
predefined relationship
 Spatial filtering
• For a linear spatial filtering, the response is
given by a sum of products of the filter
coefficients and the corresponding image
pixels in the area spanned by the filter mask

• For a 3×3 mask, the result (response) R, of

linear filtering with the filter mask at a point
(x,y) in the image is

R=w(-1,-1)f(x-1,y-1)+w(-1,0)f(x-1,y)+ …..….. +w(0,0)f(x,y)+

……….. +w(1,0)f(x+1,y)+w(1,1)f(x+1,y+1)
Spatial filtering
 Spatial Filtering
• The basic approach is to sum products between
the mask coefficients and the intensities of the
pixels under the mask at a specific location in the
image
• For a 3 x 3 filter

R = w1 z1 + w2 z 2 + ... + w9 z9
mn
R = ∑ wi zi
i =1
Spatial Filtering
 Spatial filtering
Image pixels (N8)

z1 z2 z3

z4 z5 z6

z7 z8 z9
 Spatial filtering
• Linear filtering of an image of size M×N with
filter mask of size m×n is given as
a b
g( x, y ) = ∑ ∑ w ( s, t ) f ( x + s, y + t )
s= − a t = − b

a=(m-1)/2 and b=(n-1)/2,

For x=0,1,…,M-1 and y=0,1,…,N-1
• Linear spatial filtering is also called convolving
a mask with an image
 Smoothing Filters
• Used for blurring (removal of small details
prior to large object extraction, bridging
small gaps in lines) and noise reduction.

• Low-pass (smoothing) spatial filtering

– Neighborhood averaging

- Results image blurring

 Smoothing Filtering

(Used in box filter) Weighted average

(used to reduce blurring)
 Averaging filter
• In averaging filter
a b

∑ ∑ w(s, t ) f ( x + s, y + t )
g ( x, y ) = s =− a t =− b
a b

∑ ∑ w(s, t )
s =− a s =− b
 Smoothing Filtering

• Averaging using
different mask sizes

- Note the blurring at

greater mask size
Smoothing Filtering
 Smoothing Filtering
Some more examples:
Blurring / Smoothing

1 1 1
1 1 1 * 1/9
1 1 1

Apply this scheme

to every single pixel !
 Smoothing Filtering
• Example 2:
• Weighted average

1 2 1
2 4 2 * 1/16
1 2 1
 Spatial Filtering
• Non-linear filters also use pixel
neighbourhoods but do not explicitly use
coefficients

– e.g. noise reduction by median gray-level

value computation in the neighbourhood
of the filter
 Order-statistics filters
• Median filter (nonlinear)

- Used primarily for noise reduction, eliminates

isolated spikes

• Most important properties of the median:

- Less sensible to noise than mean
- An element of the original set of values
- Needs sorting
 Median filter
- The gray level of each pixel is replaced by
the median of the gray levels in the 4 1 2
neighborhood of that pixel (instead of by
6 5 3
the average as before)
3 4 6
To calculate the median of a set of gray
values, arrange the values in the set in
ascending order. Then the middle most
4 1 2
value in the string is the median (in case of
odd number of values) 6 4 3
3 4 6
1 2 3 3 4 4 5 6 6
Median filter
 Sharpening filter
• Used to highlight fine detail in an image or to enhance
image that has been blurred
• Accomplished by spatial differentiation, as it enhances the
sharp transition in gray levels
• First derivative of a 1-D function f(x) is given as

∂f
= f ( x + 1) − f ( x)
∂x
• And Second derivative
∂ f
2
= f ( x + 1) + f ( x − 1) − 2 f ( x)
∂x 2
 Sharpening filter
• First derivative enhances any sharp
transition

• Second derivative enhances even a fine

transition

- Usually the second derivative is preferred

when fine details are to be enhanced
Sharpening filter
 Sharpening filter
• First order derivatives produce thick edges and second
order derivatives much finer ones
• A second order derivative is much more aggressive than
a first order derivative in enhancing sharp changes
 Sharpening filter
The first and second order derivatives:

1. First order derivative produces thicker edges

2. Second order derivative has a stronger response to

fine detail such as thin lines and isolated points

3. First order derivative has a stringer response to a

gray level step

4. Second order derivative produces a double

response at step changes in gray levels
 Sharpening filter
• Laplacian operator
- It is a linear operator; used for image
sharpening

For an image function f(x,y), Laplacian is

defined as
∂ f ∂ f
2 2
∇ f = 2 + 2
2

∂x ∂y
 Sharpening filter
• Partial second order derivative in X-direction:
∂ f
2
= f ( x + 1, y ) + f ( x − 1, y ) − 2 f ( x, y )
∂x 2

• Partial second order derivative in Y-direction:

∂2 f
= f ( x, y + 1) + f ( x, y − 1) − 2 f ( x, y )
∂y 2

• So,
∇ 2 f = [ f ( x + 1, y ) + f ( x − 1, y ) + f ( x, y + 1) + f ( x, y − 1)] − 4 f ( x, y )
 Sharpening filter
• If the centre coefficient of the Laplacian mask is
negative

g ( x, y ) = f ( x, y ) − ∇ f ( x, y )
2

• If the centre coefficient of the Laplacian mask is

positive
g ( x, y ) = f ( x, y ) + ∇ f ( x, y )
2
Sharpening filter