Introduction - Digital Image Processing

What is Image?
It is a pictorial representation of someone or something.
Someone has truly said “A picture is worth a thousand words”.
Image

Analog Digital
Analog Image
• Is applied on analog signal & it processes only two-dimensional signals.
• It is slower & costlier process.
• Not good quality of images.
• Generally continuous.
• Example; Photographs, Medical images, Television images and so on.
Digital Image
• Is made of pixel or picture elements.
Definitions:
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 colour 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 to fat any pair of coordinates (x,y) is called the intensity
of the image at that point. The term gray level is used often to refer to the intensity of
monochrome images. Colour images are formed by a combination of individual 2-D images.
For example, the RGB colour 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.
For example, if we consider an image.

X1 F(x0,y0)

X0 F(x1,y1)

Y0 y1
And for this image if you read alone x-axis and y-axis. Then we call,
▪ X-axis as x0,
▪ y-axis as y0
and that case the point is f(x0,y0).
Same way if you read alone x and y axis. Then we call,
▪ x-axis as x1,
▪ y-axis as y1.
and that case the point is f(x1,y1).
These x0,y0,x1,y1 are called as spatial coordinator in digital images. And the amplitude of ‘f’
at any pair of coordinated (x,y) is called as Intensity or Gray level.
If the value of x, y and amplitude of ‘f’ are finite and discrete quantities we call the image a
digital image. Basically, a digital image is composed of finite number of elements called pixels
each of which has a particular location and value. Each digital image is made of pixels and
pixels is very small area in any digital images. For e.g; any picture has 12 Mega pixel then it
has
12 x 10^6 pixels are inside the pictures.
Types of Digital Images
1. Intensity or Gray or Monochrome image
➢ Intensity image is also called gray scale image because it is made of gray
different shading.
➢ In short it is black and white type image.
➢ In this if picture is dark, the value is less.
➢ In this if picture is brighter, the value is more.
➢ Example;

Image/Picture 10 5 30
9 60 18

2. Colour or RGB image

➢ RGB means Red Green Blue.
➢ In this each pixel represent in vector that made of red, green and blue
components.
C(x,y) = [Cr(x,y), Cg(x,y), Cb(x,y)]

3. Binary or pure black and white image

➢ In this each pixel contain one bit only.
➢ 0 represent black.
➢ 1 represent white.
00000
Image/Picture
11111

4. Index image
➢ It is also called as pseudo colour image or false colour image.
➢ It is basically a black and white image.
142
647
652

Index Number Red Green Blue

1 0.1 0.5 0.3
2 1.0 0.0 0.0
3 0.0 0.0 0.0
4 0.5 0.5 0.5
5 0.2 0.8 0.9
6 0.2 0.2 0.6
Image Processing
➢ is manipulation of images by brain or computers.
➢ To see any object or think about that either brain or computer.

➢ When we see something in our eye and eye say brain to start that work it is called as
Human Image Process.
➢ If we see something instead of eye, using camera to capture the picture and process
through computer it is called Digital Image Processing.

Digital Image Processing

➢ It is the use of digital computers to process digital images through an algorithm.
➢ Digital Image Processing is a method to perform some operations on an digital
image, in order to get an enhanced image or to extract some useful information from
it.
➢ It is a type of signal processing in which input is an image and output may be image
or characteristics/features associated with that image.
➢ The motivation or purposes behind DIP is:
(1) Improvement of picture information for interpretation.
(2) Storage, transmission and representation of digital data for machine perception
is possible.
Types of Digital Image Processing
1. Low Level Process –
▪ In this both Input as well as Output have images.
▪ Primitive operations such as noise reduction, image sharpening, enhancement
etc. Input and output are images.

Input Images Output Images

DIP

▪ Example; We give noisy image at input after DIP it give cleared image at
output.

2. Middle Level Process –

▪ In this input are images but output are attributes.
▪ Image segmentation, classification of individual objects etc. Here input are
images but output are attributes of images for e.g. edges of image.
Input Images Attribute
DIP

3. High Level Process –

▪ In this input is attribute but output is making sense.
▪ It involves making sense of recognized objects and performing functions
associated with visions. For e.g. Automatic character recognition, military
recognition, autonomous navigation etc.
▪ Example; a system gives an apple image; DIP identify the image that is apple.
▪ Example; Automatic character recognition, Military recognition.

Representing Digital Images

The result of sampling and quantization is matrix of real numbers. Assume that an image f(x,y)
is sampled so that the resulting digital image has M rows and N Columns. The values of the
coordinates (x,y) now become discrete quantities thus the value of the coordinates at orgin
become 9X,y) =(o,o) The next Coordinates value along the first signify the iamge along the
first row. it does not mean that these are the actual values of physical coordinates when the
image was sampled.
Thus the right side of the matrix represents a digital element, pixel or pel. The matrix can be
represented in the following form as well. The sampling process may be viewed as partitioning
the xy plane into a grid with the coordinates of the center of each grid being a pair of elements
from the Cartesian products Z2 which is the set of all ordered pair of elements (Zi, Zj) with Zi
and Zj being integers from Z.

Hence f(x,y) is a digital image if gray level (that is, a real number from the set of real number
R) to each distinct pair of coordinates (x,y). This functional assignment is the quantization
process. If the gray levels are also integers, Z replaces R, the and a digital image become a 2D
function whose coordinates and she amplitude value are integers.

Due to processing storage and hardware consideration, the number gray levels typically is an
integer power of 2. L=2K Then, the number, b, of bites required to store a digital image is B=M
*N* k When M=N The equation become b=N2 *k When an image can have 2k gray levels, it
is referred to as “k- bit” . An image with 256 possible gray levels is called an “8- bit
image”(256=28 )
Historical Background
➢ One of the first applications of digital images was in the newspaper industry, when
pictures were first sent by submarine cable between London & New York.
➢ Then there was introduction of Bartlane cable picture transmission system in the early
1920’s reduced the time required to transport a picture across the Atlantic from more
than a week to less than three hours.
➢ It reproduced by telegraph printer with special face.
➢ This method was abounded in 1921.
➢ And then new technique was introduced, where the images were reproduced using
photographic reproduction that is made from tapes.

➢ Then, the early Bartlane system were capable of coding images in 5 distinct gray level.
➢ In 1929, the capability increased to 15 distinct level of gray.
➢ The idea of modern digital computer dates back to only 1940 with the introduction by
John Von Neumann.
➢ It introduced two key concepts:
Memory: - to store data or program.
Conditional Branching:
➢ These two concept were foundation the development of CPU.
➢ The first computer powerful enough to carry meaningful image processing tasks
appeared in the early 1960s to use in digital image processing.
➢ First picture of the moon by U.S. Spacecraft Ranger 7 took image on July 31, 1964 at
9:09AM.
➢ In late 1960 and early 1970, digital image processing techniques began & that is used
in:
• Medical Imaging: -
Computerized Axial Tomography (CAT) also called Computerized Tomography (CT)
scan which constitute a 3 D rendition of inside of the object.
• X-ray images
• Remote earth resources.
• Astronomy
• Weather Prediction and Environmental Assessment
• Automatic character recognition
• Industrial machine vision for product assembly and inspection
• Automatic processing of fingerprints
• Screening of x-rays and blood samples etc.
Applications
Since digital image processing has very wide applications and almost all of the technical fields
are impacted by DIP, we will just discuss some of the major applications of DIP.

Digital image processing has a broad spectrum of applications, such as

• Remote sensing via satellites and other spacecrafts
• Image transmission and storage for business applications
• Medical processing,
• RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging)
• SONAR (Sound Navigation and Ranging) and
• Acoustic image processing (The study of underwater sound is known as underwater acoustics
or hydro acoustics.)
• 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
• Flood and fire control and many other environmental applications.
Space image applications include:
• Recognition and analysis of objects contained in images obtained from deep space-probe
missions.
• Image transmission and storage applications occur in broadcast television
• Teleconferencing
• Transmission of facsimile images (Printed documents and graphics) for office automation
Communication over computer networks
• Closed-circuit television-based security monitoring systems and
• In military communications.
Medical applications:
• Processing of chest X- rays
• Cineangiograms
• Projection images of transaxial tomography and
• Medical images that occur in radiology nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)
• Ultrasonic scanning