WHAT IS DIGITAL IMAGE?

 A digital image is a representation of a two-dimensional image as a finite set of

digital values, called picture elements or pixels
 Pixel values typically represent gray levels, colours, heights, opacities etc
 Remember digitization implies that a digital image is an approximation of a real
scene
 Digital image processing focuses on two major tasks
 Improvement of pictorial information for human interpretation
 Processing of image data for storage, transmission and representation for
autonomous machine perception.

The use of digital image processing techniques has exploded and they are now used
for all kinds of tasks in all kinds of areas
 Image enhancement/restoration
 Artistic effects
 Medical visualisation
 Industrial inspection
 Law enforcement
 Human computer interfaces
What is Image Enhancement and Example:
One of the most common uses of DIP techniques: improve quality, remove noise etc..

 Launched in 1990 the Hubble telescope can take images of very distant objects.
However, an incorrect mirror made many of Hubble’s images useless. Image
processing techniques were used to fix this
 Artistic effects are used to make images more visually appealing, to add special
effects and to make composite images
 Medicine: Take slice from MRI scan of canine heart, and find boundaries between
types of tissue.
 Geographic Information Systems: Digital image processing techniques are used
extensively to manipulate satellite imagery->Terrain classification, Meteorology,
Night-Time Lights of the World data set.
 Industrial Inspection: Human operators are expensive, slow and unreliable. Makes
machines do the job instead. Industrial vision systems are used in all kinds of
industries
 Printed Circuit Board Inspection: Machine inspection is used to determine that all
components are present and that all solder joints are acceptable, Both conventional
imaging and x-ray imaging are used
 Law Enforcement: Image processing techniques are used extensively by law
enforcers for Number plate recognition for speed cameras/automated toll systems,
Fingerprint recognition, Enhancement of CCTV images
  Human Computer Interface HCI: Try to make human computer interfaces more
natural using Face recognition, Gesture recognition

Image Formation in Eye

 The main difference between the lens of the eye and an ordinary optical lens is that
the former is flexible.
 The shape of the lens is controlled by the tension of the ciliary muscles. These
muscles help in focussing of objects near or far.
 The distance between the centre of the lens and the retina (focal length) varies from
14 mm to about 17 mm.
 When the eye focuses on an object far away (approx. > 3 m) the lens exhibits its
lowest refractive power (Focal length = 17 mm). When the eye focuses on nearby
objects, the lens of the eye is strongly refractive (Focal length = 14 mm)..

 It is important for designers and users of image processing to understand the

characteristics of the human vision system. For efficient design of algorithms whose
output is a photograph or a display viewed by a human observer, it is beneficial to
have an understanding of the mechanism of human vision.
 Many interesting studies have been carried out and the subject of visual perception
has grown over the years. We begin with the structure of the human eye.
 The Fig. shows the horizontal as well as the vertical cross section of a human eye
ball. The front of the eye is covered by a transparent surface called cornea.
 The remaining outer cover, sclera, is composed of a fibrous coat that surrounds the
choroid, a layer containing blood capillaries. Sclera is the white portion of the eye.
 Inside the choroid, is the retina which is composed of two types of photoreceptors.
These photoreceptors are specialised to convert light rays into receptor potentials.
 These photoreceptors are called rods and cones (named due to their shape). Rods
are long and slender while cones are shorter and thicker.
 Nerves connecting the retina leave the eyeball through the optic nerve bundle.

 Light entering the cornea is focused on the retina surface by a lens that changes
shape under muscular control to perform proper focusing of near and distant
objects. The iris acts asa diaphragm to control the amount of light entering the eye.
 Each retina has about 6 million cones and 120 million rods. Rods are most important
for black and white vision in dim light.
 They also allow us to discriminate between different shades of dark and light and
permit us to see shapes and movements.
 At low levels of illumination, the rods provide a visual response called Scotopic
Vision. The fact that we can see in the dark is due to this scotopic vision.
 Cones provide colour vision and high visual acuity (sharpness of vision) in bright light.
Cones respond to higher levels of illumination, their response is called Photopic
Vision.
 In the intermediate range of illumination, both rods and cones are active and
provide Mesopic Vision.
 In moon light, we cannot see colour because only the rods are functioning. The
distribution of rods and cones in the retina are shown Fig.
 At a point near the optic nerve, called fovea, the density of the cones is the greatest.
Due to this, it is the region of sharpest photopic vision.
 The photoreceptors are connected to the nerves and these nerves, combined
together, leave the eyeball as the optic nerve. (It is not as simple as stated and
interested students can refer to medical journals).
 The optical nerve is a bundle of nerves (approx 800,000 nerve fibres) leaving the
eyeball. The region from where this optic nerve leaves the eyeball has no rods and
cones. This is called the blind spot.
 We cannot see an image that strikes the blind spot. Normally we are not aware of
having a blind spot but we can easily convince ourselves of its presence.
1. Image Acquisition
This is the first step or process of the fundamental steps of digital image processing. Image
acquisition could be as simple as being given an image that is already in digital form.
Generally, the image acquisition stage involves preprocessing, such as scaling etc.
2. Image Enhancement
Image enhancement is among the simplest and most appealing areas of digital image
processing. Basically, the idea behind enhancement techniques is to bring out detail that is
obscured, or simply to highlight certain features of interest in an image. Such as, changing
brightness & contrast etc.
3. Image Restoration
Image restoration is an area that also deals with improving the appearance of an image.
However, unlike enhancement, which is subjective, image restoration is objective, in the
sense that restoration techniques tend to be based on mathematical or probabilistic models
of image degradation.
4. Morphological Processing
Morphological processing deals with tools for extracting image components that are useful
in the representation and description of shape.
5. Segmentation
Segmentation procedures partition an image into its constituent parts or objects. In general,
autonomous segmentation is one of the most difficult tasks in digital image processing. A
rugged segmentation procedure brings the process a long way toward successful solution of
imaging problems that require objects to be identified individually.
6. Object recognition
Recognition is the process that assigns a label, such as, “vehicle” to an object based on its
descriptors.
7. Representation and Description
Representation and description almost always follow the output of a segmentation stage,
which usually is raw pixel data, constituting either the boundary of a region or all the points
in the region itself. Choosing a representation is only part of the solution for transforming
raw data into a form suitable for subsequent computer processing. Description deals with
extracting attributes that result in some quantitative information of interest or are basic for
differentiating one class of objects from another.
8. Color Image Processing
Color image processing is an area that has been gaining its importance because of the
significant increase in the use of digital images over the Internet. This may include color
modeling and processing in a digital domain etc.

9. Compression
Compression deals with techniques for reducing the storage required to save an image or
the bandwidth to transmit it. Particularly in the uses of internet it is very much necessary to
compress data.

Brightness Adaptation:

 Actual light intensity is (basically) log-compressed for perception.

 Human vision can see light between the glare limit and scotopicthreshold but not all
levels at the same time.
 The eye adjusts to an average value (the red dot) and can simultaneously see all light in
a smaller range surrounding the adaptation level.
 Light appears black at the bottom of the instantaneous range and white at the top of
that range.

 The range of light intensity levels to which the human visual system can adapt is
enormous, of the order of 1010from the scotopicthreshold to the glare limit. It
simply means we can see things in the dark and also when there is a lot of
illumination.
  It has been shown that the intensity of light perceived by the human visual system
(subjective brightness) is a logarithmic function of the light intensity incident on the
human eye.
 The curve in the Fig represents the range of intensities that the human visual system
can adapt.
 When illumination is low, it is the scotopic vision that plays a dominant role while for
high intensities of illumination, it is the photopic vision which is dominant.
 As can be seen from the figure, the transition from scotopic vision to photopic vision
is gradual and at certain levels of illuminations, both of them play a role. To cut a
long story short, the dynamic range of the human eye is enormous.

 But there is a catch here. The eye cannot operate over the entire range
simultaneously i.e., at a given point of time, the eye can only observe a small range
of illuminations. This phenomena is known as Brightness Adaptation. The fact that
our eyes can operate only on a small range, can be proved by a simple experiment
on ourselves.
 Stare at the sun for a couple of seconds, the eye adapts itself to the upper range of
the intensity values. Now look away from the sun and you will find that you cannot
see anything for sometime.
 This is because the eye takes a finite time to adapt itself to this new range. A similar
phenomenon is observed when the power supply of our homes is cut-off in the
night.
 Everything seems to be pitch dark and nothing can be seen for sometime. But
gradually our eyes adjust to this low level of illumination and then things start
getting visible even in the dark.
When Viewing Any Scene:

 The eye rapidly scans across the field of view while coming to momentary rest at
each point of particular interest.
 At each of these points the eye adapts to the average brightness of the local region
surrounding the point of interest.
 This phenomena is known as local brightness adaptation.
 Glare is experienced, when Lamps, Windows, Luminaries, other areas are brighter
than general brightness in the environment.
  An image sensoris a solid-state device, the part of the camera's hardware that
captures light and converts what you see through a viewfinder or LCD monitor into
an image.

 Image sampling: discretize an image in the spatial domain

 Spatial resolution / image resolution: pixel size or number of pixels

STORAGE

 Short term storage for use during processing.

 Online storage for relatively fast recall.
 Archical storage for infrequent access.
IMAGE SAMPLING AND QUANTIZATION (PPT)