Aug-19

FSB32103: MACHINE VISION

TECHNOLOGY

“One picture is worth more than ten thousand words”

•Anonymous

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This lecture will cover:

• What is a digital image?
• What is digital image processing?
• History of digital image processing
• State of the art examples of digital image processing
• Key stages in digital image processing

What is a 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.

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• Pixel values typically represent gray levels, colours, heights,

opacities etc.
• Digitization implies that a digital image is an approximation
of a real scene.

1 pixel

• Common image formats include:

• 1 sample per point (B&W and Grayscale)
• 3 samples per point (Red, Green, and Blue)
• 4 samples per point (Red, Green, Blue, and “Alpha”, a.k.a.
Opacity – degree to which light is not allowed to travel)

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• 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
• Some argument about where image processing ends and
fields such as image analysis and computer vision start.

The continuum from image processing to computer vision can

be broken up into low-, mid- and high-level processes.

Low Level Process Mid Level Process High Level Process

Input: Image
Input: Attributes
Output: Image
Input: Image Output: Understanding
Examples: Noise Output: Attributes
Examples: Scene
removal, image
Examples: Object understanding,
sharpening
recognition, segmentation autonomous navigation

In this course, we will stop here

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History of DIP
• Early 1920s: One of the first applications of digital imaging was in the
news-paper industry.
• The Bartlane cable picture transmission service.

• Images were transferred by submarine cable between London

and New York.

• Pictures were coded for cable transfer and reconstructed at the

receiving end on a telegraph printer.

Early digital image

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• Mid to late 1920s: Improvements to the Bartlane system resulted in

higher quality images.
• New reproduction processes based on photographic techniques.
• Increased number of tones in reproduced images.

Improved
digital image Early 15 tone digital image
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• 1960s: Improvements in computing technology and the onset of

the space race led to a surge of work in digital image processing
• 1964: Computers used to improve the quality of images of the moon
taken by the Ranger 7 probe.
• Such techniques were used in other space
missions including the Apollo landings.

A picture of the moon taken by the

Ranger 7 probe minutes before landing
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• 1970s: Digital image processing begins to be used in medical

applications
• 1979: Sir Godfrey N.
Hounsfield & Prof. Allan M.
Cormack share the Nobel
Prize in medicine for the
invention of tomography,
the technology behind
Computerised Axial
Tomography (CAT) scans

Typical head slice CAT image

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• 1980s - Today: 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

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Image Enhancement
One of the most common uses of DIP techniques: improve
quality, remove noise etc

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Examples: The Hubble Telescope

• 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

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Examples: Artistic Effects

Artistic effects are used to
make images more visually
appealing, to add special
effects and to make
composite images

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Examples: Medicine
• Take slice from MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scan of canine
heart, and find boundaries between types of tissue
• Image with gray levels representing tissue density
• Use a suitable filter to highlight edges

Original MRI Image of a Dog Heart Edge Detection Image

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Examples: GIS
• Geographic Information Systems
• Digital image processing techniques are used extensively to
manipulate satellite imagery
• Terrain classification
• Meteorology

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Examples: GIS
• Night-Time Lights of the World data
set
• Global inventory of human
settlement
• Not hard to imagine the kind of
analysis that might be done
using this data

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Examples: Industrial Inspection

• Human operators are expensive, slow
and
unreliable
• Make machines do the job instead
• Industrial vision systems
are used in all kinds of industries
• Can we trust them?

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Examples: PCB Inspection

Printed Circuit Board (PCB) 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.

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Examples: Law Enforcement

• Image processing techniques are used
extensively by law enforcers
• Number plate recognition for speed
cameras/automated toll systems
• Fingerprint recognition
• Enhancement of CCTV images

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Examples: HCI
• Try to make human computer interfaces
more natural
• Face recognition
• Gesture recognition
• Does anyone remember the
user interface from “Minority Report”?
• These tasks can be extremely difficult

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Key Stages in Digital Image Processing

Morphological
Image
Processing
Restoration
(geometrical)

Image Segmentation
Enhancement (set of pixel)

Image Object
Acquisition Recognition

Colour Image Image Representation &

Problem Domain
Processing Compression Description
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Key Stages in Digital Image Processing

Image Morphological
Restoration Processing

Image
Segmentation
Enhancement

Image Object
Acquisition Recognition

Colour Image Image Representation &

Problem Domain
Processing Compression Description
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Image Acquisition
Its name specifies definition. To get image from any source especially
hardware based any source is called as image acquisition in the
image processing because without image receiving/acquisition, the
processing on the image is not possible. It is the first step in the
workflow.

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Key Stages in Digital Image Processing

Image Morphological
Restoration Processing

Image Segmentation
Enhancement (set of pixel)

Image Object
Acquisition Recognition

Colour Image Image Representation &

Problem Domain
Processing Compression Description
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Image Enhancement
• In computer graphics, the process of improving the quality of
a digitally stored image by manipulating the image with software.
• It is quite easy, for example, to make an image lighter or darker, or to
increase or decrease contrast.
• Advanced image enhancement software also supports many filters for
altering images in various ways.
• Programs specialized for image enhancement are sometimes
called image editors.

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Key Stages in Digital Image Processing

Image Morphological
Restoration Processing

Image
Segmentation
Enhancement

Image Object
Acquisition Recognition

Colour Image Image Representation &

Problem Domain
Processing Compression Description
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Image restoration
The operation of taking a corrupted/noisy image
and estimating the clean original image

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Difference between image restoration and image enhancement?

Image restoration means improving the image to match the original

image.

Image enhancement means improving the image to show some

"hidden" details / bringing into evidence some part of the image. It
only applies locally and is not necessarily constrained to match the
original real image.

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Key Stages in Digital Image Processing

Image Morphological
Restoration Processing

Image
Segmentation
Enhancement

Image Object
Acquisition Recognition

Colour Image Image Representation &

Problem Domain
Description
Processing Compression
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Key Stages in Digital Image Processing

Image Morphological
Restoration Processing

Image
Segmentation
Enhancement

Image Object
Acquisition Recognition

Representation &
Problem Domain Colour Image Image
Description
Processing Compression 33

Key Stages in Digital Image Processing

Image Morphological
Restoration Processing

Image
Segmentation
Enhancement

Image Object
Acquisition Recognition

Representation &
Problem Domain Colour Image Image Description
Processing Compression 34

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Key Stages in Digital Image Processing

Image Morphological
Restoration Processing

Image
Segmentation
Enhancement

Image Object
Acquisition Recognition

Representation &
Problem Domain Colour Image Image Description
Processing Compression 35

Key Stages in Digital Image Processing

Image Morphological
Restoration Processing

Image
Segmentation
Enhancement

Image Object
Acquisition Recognition

Representation &
Problem Domain Colour Image Image Description
Processing Compression 36

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Image Morphological
Restoration Processing

Image
Segmentation
Enhancement

Image Object
Acquisition Recognition

Colour Image Image Representation &

Problem Domain
Processing Compression Description
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Summary
•We have looked at:
• What is a digital image?
• What is digital image processing?
• History of digital image processing
• State of the art examples of digital image processing
• Key stages in digital image processing
•Next week we start to see how it all works…

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