Module -1

DIGITAL IMAGE FUNDAMENTALS

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Why do we need image processing?
It is motivated by two major applications-
o Improvement of pictorial information
for human perception.
o For autonomous application
o Efficient storage and transmission

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Image Processing Goals

•Image Processing is a subclass of signal processing

concerned specifically with Pictures.
•It Aims to improve the image quality for
• Human Perception: subjective
• Computer interpretation:objective

•Compress images for efficient Storage/transmission

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 What is Digital Image Processing?
•Computer manipulation of pictures, or images that
have been converted into numeric form.
Typical operations include
•Contrast Enhancement
•Remove Blur from image
•Smooth out graininess, speckale or noise
•Magnify, minify or rotate an image(image warping)
•Geometric Correction
•Image Compression for efficient
storage/transmission.

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 What is Digital Image???

An image may be defined as a 2D function f(x,y), where x and y

are the spatial coordinates and f is the intensity value at x and y.
If x,y and f are all discrete, then the image is called as Digital
Image.

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Examples of Fields that use Digital Image processing.

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 Gamma-Ray Imaging
Major uses of Uses of
Gamma-Ray Imaging
include nuclear medicine,
astronomical observations.
•Nuclear medicine: patient is
injected with radioactive
isotope that emits gamma
rays as it decays. Images are
produced from emissions
collected by detectors.

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Contd.
•Fig 1a shows an image of complete bone scan
obtained by using gamma ray imaging.
•Images of this sort are used to locate sites of bone
pathology such as infections or tumors.
•Fig 1b shows an another modality called Positron
Emission Tomography. This image shows tumor in the
brain and one in the lung. Easily visible as small white
masses.

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 X-Ray Imaging
Oldest source of EM radiation for
imaging
•Used for CAT scans
•Used for angiograms where X-ray
contrast medium is injected
through catheter to enhance
contrast at site to be studied.
•Industrial inspection

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 X-Ray Imaging(Contd…)
•CT Image: Computed Tomography(good for hard tissues such as
bones.
•In CT each slice of human body is imaged by means of X-ray
and then a number of such images are piled up to form a
volumetric representation of a body or specific part.

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Imaging in the Microwave Band:
The dominant application of imaging in the microwave band is
radar.
The imaging radar has the ability to collect data over any
region at any time regardless of weather or ambient lighting
conditions.
Imaging in the Radio Band.
The major application is in the field of medicine which includes MRI.
MRI: Magnetic Resonance Imaging very similar to CT Imaging, provides more
detailed images of the soft tissues of the body. It can be used to study both
structure and function of a body.
Difference between CT and MRI is the imaging radiation. Ct uses ionizing
radiation such as X-ray whereas MRI uses a powerful magnetic field.
Thermal Image: Thermographic camera used to capture images in night vision.

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Imaging in the Visible band and nfrared band:
Infraband applications:
Industrial inspection
-inspect for missing parts
-missing pills
-unacceptable bottle fill
-unacceptable air pockets
-anomalies in cereal color
-incorrectly manufactured replacement lens for eyes

Imaging in visible band

• Face detection &recognition
• Iris Recognition
• Number Plate recognition

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Fundamental Steps in Image Processing

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Components of a general purpose Image Processing

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 Structure of Human Eye

•Shape is nearly spherical

•Average diameter = 20mm
•Three membranes:
-Cornea and Sclera
-Choroid
-Retina

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 Structure of Human Eye
•Cornea
-Tough, transparent tissue that covers the
anterior surface of the eye
•Sclera
-Opaque membrane that encloses the remainder
of the optical globe

•Choroid
-Lies below the sclera
-Contains network of blood vessels that
serve as the major source of nutrition to
the eye.
-Choroid coat is heavily pigmented and
hence helps to reduce the amount of
extraneous light entering the eye and the
backscatter within the optical globe
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 Lens and Retina
•Lens
-Both infrared and ultraviolet light are absorbed
appreciably by proteins within the lens structure and,
in excessive amounts, can cause damage to the eye
•Retina
-Innermost membrane of the eye which lines the
inside of the wall’s entire posterior portion. When the
eye is properly focused, light from an object outside
the eye Is imaged on the retina.

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 Receptors
•Two classes of light receptors on retina: cones and rods
•Cones
-6-7 million cones lie in central portion of the retina, called the
fovea.
-Highly sensitive to color and bright light.
-Resolve fine detail since each is connected to its own nerve
end.
-Cone vision is called photopic or bright-light vision.
•Rods
-75-150 million rods distributed over the retina surface.
-Reduced amount of detail discernable since several rods are
connected to a single nerve end.
-Serves to give a general, overall picture of the field of view.
-Sensitive to low levels of illumination.
-Rod vision is called scotopic or dim-light vision. 18
 Distribution of Cones and Rods
•Blind spot: no receptors in region of emergence of optic nerve.
•Distribution of receptors is radially symmetric about the fovea.
•Cones are most dense in the center of the retina (e.g., fovea)
•Rods increase in density from the center out to 20°and then decrease

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Density of rods and cones for a cross section of right eye

Image Formation in the Eye

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 Brightness Adaptation and Discrimination

•The eye’s ability to discriminate between

intensities is important.
•Experimental evidence suggests that subjective
brightness (perceived) is a logarithmic function of
light incident on eye. Notice approximately linear
response in log-scale below.

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Contd…

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Two Phenomena to illustrate that the perceived brightness is not a simple
function of intensity

1. Mach Band Effect

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Two Phenomena to illustrate that the perceived brightness is not a simple
function of intensity(contd….)

2. Simultaneous Contrast

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Optical Illusions

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 Unit – 2 DIGITAL IMAGE FUNDAMENTALS
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IMAGE SENSING AND ACQUISITION
Image Acquisition Using a Single Sensor

Unit – 2 DIGITAL IMAGE FUNDAMENTALS

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Image Acquisition Using Sensor Strips

Unit – 2 DIGITAL IMAGE FUNDAMENTALS

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Image Acquisition Using Sensor Array

Unit – 2 DIGITAL IMAGE FUNDAMENTALS

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 Unit – 2 DIGITAL IMAGE FUNDAMENTALS
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Sampling and Quantization
Continuous Image Result of image Sampling
Projected on to a image and Quantization
array

Unit – 2 DIGITAL IMAGE FUNDAMENTALS

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REPRESENTING DIGITAL
IMAGE

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 Contd…
Let A be a digital Image

• The pixel intensity levels (gray scale levels) are in

the interval of [0, L-1].
0  ai,j L-1 , W h e r e L =

• b is the no. of bits required to store digitized image

of size M by N, then b is given as
• 33
b=MxNx k
Contd…
 The range of values spanned by the gray scale is called the
dynamic range of an image.
 It is also defines as the ratio of maximum measurable
intensity to minimum detectable intensity level.
 Upper limit- saturation

 Lower limit- Noise

 Images whose gray levels span a significant portion of the

gray scale are considered as having a high dynamic range.
 Contrast (highest- lowest) intensity level
 When an appreciable number of pixels exhibit this property,
the image will have high contrast.
 Conversely, an image with low dynamic range tends to have a
dull, washed out gray look.

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 Spatial and Intensity Resolution

Spatial resolution is the smallest discernible(noticeable) detail in

an image.
 It is also stated as dots per unit inch(dpi), line pairs per unit
distance.

Gray-level resolution similarly refers to the smallest discernible

(noticeable) change in gray level.
 Measuring discernible changes in gray level is a highly subjective
process
 The number of gray levels is usually an integer power of 2

Thus, an L-level digital image of size M*N has a spatial resolution

of M*N pixels and a gray-level resolution of L levels

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False Contouring

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The effect caused by the use of an insufficient number of gray levels in
smooth areas of a digital image, is called false contouring

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Example for reducing the spatial
Resolution

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 IMAGE INTERPOLATION
 Interpolation is the process of using known data to estimate
values at unknown locations.
 Interpolation is the process of determining the values of a
function at positions lying between its samples.
 It is the basic tool used extensively in tasks such as
zooming, Shrinking, rotating and geometric corrections.
 Zooming and Shrinking are basically image resampling
methods.
 The process of interpolation is one of the fundamental
operations in image processing. The image quality highly
depend on the used interpolation technique.

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 Zooming and Shrinking(Resampling)
Optical Zoom vs. Digital Zoom
 An Optical zoom means moving the zoom lens so that it increases
the magnification of light before it even reaches the digital sensor.
 A digital zoom is not really zoom , it is simply interpolating
the
image after it has been acquired at the sensor (pixilation
process).

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Contd….
• Zooming may be viewed as oversampling, while shrinking
may be viewed as undersampling.
• Sampling and quantizing are applied to an original continuous
image, zooming and shrinking are applied to a digital image.
• Zooming requires two steps:
• The creation of new pixel locations.
• The assignment of gray levels to those new locations.
• Zooming Methodologies
• Nearest neighbor interpolation,
• Pixel Replication,
• Bilinear interpolation
• Bicubic Interpolation
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Nearest neighbor interpolation:
 Suppose that we have an image of size 500 × 500 pixels and we
want to enlarge it 1.5 times to 750 × 750 pixels.
 Conceptually, one of the easiest ways to visualize zooming is
laying an imaginary 750 × 750 grid over the original image.
 Obviously, the spacing in the grid would be less than one pixel
because we are fitting it over a smaller image.
 In order to perform gray-level assignment for any point in the
overlay, we look for the closest pixel in the original image and
assign its gray level to the new pixel in the grid.
 When we are done with all points in the overlay grid, we simply
expand it to the original specified size to obtain the zoomed
image.
 This method of gray-level assignment is called nearest neighbor
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interpolation.
Pixel replication:
 Pixel replication, the method used to generate Figs. 2.20(b) through (f), is a
special case of nearest neighbor interpolation.
 Pixel replication is applicable when we want to increase the size of an image
an integer number of times.
 For instance, to double the size of an image, we can duplicate each column.
This doubles the image size in the horizontal direction.
 Then, we duplicate each row of the enlarged image to double the size in the
vertical direction. The same procedure is used to enlarge the image by any
integer number of times (triple, quadruple, and so on).
 Duplication is just done the required number of times to achieve the desired
size.
 The gray-level assignment of each pixel is predetermined by the fact that new
locations are exact duplicates of old locations.
Although nearest neighbor interpolation is fast, it has the undesirable feature that
it produces a checkerboard effect that is particularly objectionable at high factors
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of magnification,
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Bilinear interpolation:
 A slightly more sophisticated way of accomplishing gray-level assignments is
bilinear interpolation using the four nearest neighbors of a point.
 Let (x', y') denote the coordinates of a point in the zoomed image and let v(x’,
y') denote the gray level assigned to it.
 For bilinear interpolation, the assigned gray level is given by:
v(x', y') = ax' + by' + cx'y' + d
where; the four co-efficients are determined from the four equations in four
unknowns that can be written using the four nearest neighbors of point (x', y')
 It is possible to use more neighbors for interpolation.
 Using more neighbors implies fitting the points with a more complex surface,
which generally gives smoother results.
 This is an exceptionally important consideration in image generation for 3-D
graphics and in medical image processing, but the extra computational burden
seldom is justifiable for general-purpose digital image zooming and shrinking,
where bilinear interpolation generally is the method of choice.
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Contd….

Bilinear interpolation considers the closest 2x2

neighborhood of known pixel values surrounding the
unknown pixel. It then takes a weighted average of these 4
pixels to arrive at its final interpolated value. This results 46

in much smoother looking images than nearest neighbors.

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BICUBIC INTERPOLATION
 Involves sixteen neighbors
to estimate intensity
 V(x, y) = ∑∑aij xi yj ( i, j = 0
to 3)
 Need to solve sixteen
equations
 Gives better results than
other methods
 More complex
 Used in Adobe Photoshop,
and Corel Photopaint
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SOME BASIC RELATIONSHIPS
BETWEEN PIXELS

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SOME BASIC RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PIXELS
 
 An image is denoted by f(x, y).
 Lowercase letters such as p and q are used to represent
particular pixels in an image.
 The structure of a digital image allows stating some basic
relationships between pixels that can be useful in some
practical cases.
 The pixels are organized in a regular structure and can have a
limited number of values.

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 Digital Image Coordinates
(x-1,y-1) (x-1,y) (x-1,y+1)
------
(0,0) (0,1) (0,2)

(x,y-1) (x,y) (x,y+1)

------
(1,0) (1,1) (1,2)

(x+1,y-1) (x+1,y) (x+1,y+1)

------
(2,0) (2,1) (2,2)
------
------

------

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 Digital Image Coordinates
(x-1,y-1) (x-1,y) (x-1,y+1)
------
(0,0) (0,1) (0,2)

(x,y-1) (x,y) (x,y+1)

------
(1,0) (1,1) (1,2)

(x+1,y-1) (x+1,y) (x+1,y+1)

------
(2,0) (2,1) (2,2)
------
------

------

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 Neighbors of a Pixel
 : 4-neighbors of p.
• Any pixel p(x, y) has two vertical and two horizontal neighbors, given by
(x+1,y), (x-1, y), (x, y+1), (x, y-1)
• This set of pixels are called the 4-neighbors of P, and is denoted by N4 (P)
• Each of them is at a unit distance from P.

(x-1,y)

(x,y-1) p(x,y) (x,y+1)

(x+1,y)
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 Neighbors of a Pixel
 : Diagonal-neighbors of p.
• This set of pixels, called Diagonal-neighbors and
denoted by
• : four diagonal neighbors of p have coordinates:
(x+1,y+1), (x+1,y-1), (x-1,y+1), (x-1,y-1)
• Each of them are at Euclidean distance of 1.414 from
P.

(x-1,y-1) (x-1,y+1)

p(x,y)

(x+1,y-1) (x+1,y+1) 54
 Neighbors of a Pixel
 : 8-neighbors of p.
• and together are called 8-neighbors of p, denoted by .
•
• Some of the points in the may fall outside image when p
lies on the border of image.

(x-1,y-1) (x-1,y) (x-1,y+1)

(x,y-1) p(x,y) (x,y+1)

(x+1,y-1) (x+1,y) (x+1,y+1) 55

 Adjacency
• Two pixels are adjacent if:
•They are neighbors in some sense (e.g. N4(p), N8(p), …) •Their
gray levels satisfy a specified criterion of similarity V (e.g.
equality, …)
• For example, in a binary image two pixels are connected if they are 4-
neighbors and have same value (0/1)
• Let v: a set of intensity values used to define adjacency and
connectivity.
• In a binary Image v={1}, if we are referring to adjacency of pixels
with value 1.
• In a Gray scale image, the idea is the same, but v typically contains
more elements, for example v= {180, 181, 182,....,200}.
• If the possible intensity values 0 to 255, v set could be any subset of
these 256 values.

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 Adjacency(Contd..)
 
Types of adjacency
1. 4-adjacency: Two pixels p and q with values from v are 4-adjacent if q is in the
set .
2. 8-adjacency: Two pixels p and q with values from v are 8-adjacent if q is in the
set .
3. m-adjacency (mixed): two pixels p and q with values from v are m-adjacent if:
I. q is in or
II. q is in and The set ∩ has no pixel whose values are from v (No intersection).
• Mixed adjacency is a modification of 8-adjacency ''introduced to eliminate the
ambiguities that often arise when 8- adjacency is used. (eliminate multiple path
connection)
• Pixel arrangement as shown in figure for v= {1} Example:

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 Adjacency(Contd..)
Two subsets S1 and S2 are adjacent, if some pixel in S1 is adjacent to some pixel in
S2.
Adjacent means, either 4-, 8- or m-adjacency.
0 1 1
0 1 1 0 1 1
0 1 0
0 1 0 0 1 0
0 0 1
0 0 1 0 0 1
8-path m-path

p p p

q q q

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m-path from p to q
8-path from p to q
solves this ambiguity
results in some ambiguity
 Path
 
•A digital path (or curve) from pixel p with coordinate (x,y) to
pixel q with coordinate (s,t) is a sequence of distinct pixels
with coordinates (), (), ..., (), where (.
•() is adjacent pixel (xi-1, yi-1) for 1≤j≤n ,
•n- The length of the path.
•If ()= ():the path is closed path.
•We can define 4- ,8- , or m-paths depending on the type of
adjacency specified.

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 DISTANCE MEASURES

 For pixels p,q,z with coordinates (x,y), (s,t), (u,v), D is a

distance function or metric if:
 D(p,q) ≥ 0 (D(p,q)=0 iff p=q)
 D(p,q) = D(q,p) and
 D(p,z) ≤ D(p,q) + D(q,z)

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 DISTANCE MEASURES

 The Euclidean Distance between p and q is defined as:

De (p,q) = [(x – s)2 + (y - t)2]1/2

Pixels having a distance less than or equal q (s,t)

, q)
(p
to some value r from (x,y) are the points De

contained in a disk of

radius r centered at (x,y)

p (x,y)
DISTANCE MEASURES
 The D4 distance (also called city-block distance) between p and
q is defined as:
D4 (p,q) = | x – s | + | y – t |

Pixels having a D4 distance from q (s,t)

(x,y), less than or equal to some

value r form a Diamond
centered at (x,y) D4
p (x,y)
DISTANCE MEASURES
Example:
The pixels with distance D4 ≤ 2 from (x,y) form the following
contours of constant distance.

The pixels with D4 = 1 are

the 4-neighbors of (x,y)
DISTANCE MEASURES
 The D8 distance (also called chessboard distance) between p
and q is defined as:
D8 (p,q) = max(| x – s |,| y – t |)

Pixels having a D8 distance from q (s,t)

(x,y), less than or equal to some

value r form a square D8(b)
Centered at (x,y)
p (x,y) D8(a)

D8 = max(D8(a) , D8(b))
DISTANCE MEASURES
Example:
D8 distance ≤ 2 from (x,y) form the following contours of
constant distance.
DISTANCE MEASURES
 Dm distance:
is defined as the shortest m-path between the points.
In this case, the distance between two pixels will depend on the
values of the pixels along the path, as well as the values of
their neighbors.
DISTANCE MEASURES
 Example:
Consider the following arrangement of pixels and assume that
p, p2, and p4 have value 1 and that p1 and p3 can have can have
a value of 0 or 1
Suppose that we consider
the adjacency of pixels
values 1 (i.e. V = {1})
DISTANCE MEASURES
 Cont. Example:
Now, to compute the Dm between points p and p4
Here we have 4 cases:
Case1: If p1 =0 and p3 = 0
The length of the shortest m-path
(the Dm distance) is 2 (p, p2, p4)
DISTANCE MEASURES
 Cont. Example:
Case2: If p1 =1 and p3 = 0
now, p1 and p will no longer be adjacent (see m-adjacency
definition)
then, the length of the shortest
path will be 3 (p, p1, p2, p4)
DISTANCE MEASURES
 Cont. Example:
Case3: If p1 =0 and p3 = 1
The same applies here, and the shortest –m-path will be 3 (p,
p2, p3, p4)
DISTANCE MEASURES
 Cont. Example:
Case4: If p1 =1 and p3 = 1
The length of the shortest m-path will be 4 (p, p1 , p2, p3, p4)
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