Concept of Sampling
Concept of Sampling
Concept of Sampling
To create an image which is digital, we need to covert continuous data into digital form.
There are two steps in which it is done.
Sampling
Quantization
We will discuss sampling now, and quantization will be discussed later on but for now on
we will discuss just a little about the difference between these two and the need of these
two steps.
Basic idea:
The basic idea behind converting an analog signal to its digital signal is
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Since an image is continuous not just in its co-ordinates (x axis), but also in its amplitude
(y axis), so the part that deals with the digitizing of co-ordinates is known as sampling.
And the part that deals with digitizing the amplitude is known as quantization.
Sampling.
Sampling has already been introduced in our tutorial of introduction to signals and system.
But we are going to discuss here more.
If you will look at the above figure, you will see that there are some random variations in
the signal. These variations are due to noise. In sampling we reduce this noise by taking
samples. It is obvious that more samples we take, the quality of the image would be more
better, the noise would be more removed and same happens vice versa.
However, if you take sampling on the x axis, the signal is not converted to digital format,
unless you take sampling of the y-axis too which is known as quantization. The more
samples eventually means you are collecting more data, and in case of image, it means
more pixels.
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Lets say we have total of 25 pixels, that means we have a square image of 5 X 5. Then as
we have dicussed above in sampling, that more samples eventually result in more pixels.
So it means that of our continuous signal, we have taken 25 samples on x axis. That
refers to 25 pixels of this image.
This leads to another conclusion that since pixel is also the smallest division of a CCD
array. So it means it has a relationship with CCD array too, which can be explained as this.
Oversampling.
In the beginning we have define that sampling is further categorize into two types. Which
is up sampling and down sampling. Up sampling is also called as over sampling.
The oversampling has a very deep application in image processing which is known as
Zooming.
Zooming
We will formally introduce zooming in the upcoming tutorial, but for now on, we will just
briefly explain zooming.
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Zooming refers to increase the quantity of pixels, so that when you zoom an image, you
will see more detail.
The increase in the quantity of pixels is done through oversampling. The one way to zoom
is, or to increase samples, is to zoom optically, through the motor movement of the lens
and then capture the image. But we have to do it, once the image has been captured.
The concept is same, which is, to increase samples. But the key difference is that while
sampling is done on the signals, zooming is done on the digital image.
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