UNIT-I

DIGITAL IMAGE FUNDAMENTALS &

IMAGE TRANSFORMS

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 What Is Digital Image Processing?
• The field of digital image processing refers to
processing digital images by means of a digital
computer.

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 What is a Digital Image ?
• An image may be defined as a two- dimensional
function, f(x,y) where x and y are spatial (plane)
coordinates, and the amplitude of f at any pair of
coordinates (x, y) is called the intensity or gray level
of the image at that point.

• When x, y, and the amplitude values of f are all finite,

discrete quantities, we call the image a digital image

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 Picture elements, Image elements, pels, and
pixels
• A digital image is composed of a finite number of
elements, each of which has a particular location and
value.
• These elements are referred to as picture elements,
image elements, pels, and pixels.

• Pixel is the term most widely used to denote the

elements of a digital image.

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 The Origins of Digital Image
Processing
• One of the first applications of digital images was in
the newspaper industry, when pictures were first sent
by submarine cable between London and New York.

• Specialized printing equipment coded pictures for

cable transmission and then reconstructed them at
the receiving end.

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• Figure was transmitted in this way and reproduced on
a telegraph printer fitted with typefaces simulating a
halftone pattern.

• The initial problems in improving the visual quality of

these early digital pictures were related to the
selection of printing procedures and the distribution
of intensity levels

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• The printing technique based on photographic
reproduction made from tapes perforated at the
telegraph receiving terminal from 1921.

• Figure shows an image obtained using this method.

• The improvements are tonal quality and in resolution.

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• The early Bartlane systems were capable of coding
images in five distinct levels of gray.
• This capability was increased to 15 levels in 1929.

• Figure is typical of the type of images thatcould be

obtained using the 15-tone equipment.

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• Figure shows the first image of the moon taken by
Ranger

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 Applications of DIP
• The field of image processing has applications in
medicine and the space program.

• Computer procedures are used to enhance the contrast

or code the intensity levels into color for easier
interpretation of X-rays and other images used in
industry, medicine, and the biological sciences.

• Geographers use the same or similar techniques to

study pollution patterns from aerial and satellite
imagery
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• Image enhancement and restoration procedures are
used to process degraded images of unrecoverable
objects or

• Experimental results too expensive to duplicate.

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Structure of the Human Eye

D KHALANDARBASHA

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• The eye is nearly a sphere, with an average
diameter of approximately 20mm.

• Three membranes enclose the eye:

• The cornea and sclera outer cover the choroid the

retina.

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 Cornea
• The cornea is a tough, transparent tissue that covers
the anterior surface of the eye.

• Continuous with the cornea,the sclera is an opaque

membrane that encloses the remainder of the optic
globe.

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 Choroid
• The choroid lies directly below the sclera.

• This membrane contains a net- work of blood vessels

that serve as the major source of nutrition to the eye.

• The 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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• At its anterior extreme, the choroid is divided into the
ciliary body and the iris diaphragm.

• The latter contracts or expands to control the amount

of light that enters the eye

• The front of the iris contains the visible pigment of

the eye, whereas the back contains a black pigment.

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• The lens is made up of concentric layers of fibrous
cells and is suspended by fibers that attach to the
ciliary body.

• It contains 60 to 70% water, about 6% fat, and more

protein than any other tissue in the eye.

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 Retina
• The innermost membrane of the eye is the retina,
which lines the Inside of the ǁall’s entire posterior
portion.

• When the eye is properly focused, light from an object

outside the eye is imaged on the retina.

• Pattern vision is afforded by the distribution of discrete

light receptors over the surface of the retina.

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• There are two classes of receptors: cones and rods.

• The cones in each eye number between 6 and 7

million.

• They are located primarily in the central portion of

the retina, called the fovea, and are highly sensitive
to color.

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• Muscles controlling the eye rotate the eyeball until
the image of an object of interest falls on the fovea.

• Cone vision is called photopic or bright-light vision.

• The number of rods is much larger: Some 75 to 150

million are distributed over the retinal surface.

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• Figure shows the density of rods and cones for a
cross section of the right eye passing through the
region of emergence of the optic nerve from the
eye.

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• The absence of receptors in this area results in the
so-called blind spot.

• Fig. shows that cones are most dense in the center

of the retina (in the center area of the fovea)

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 Image Formation in the Eye
• The principal 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 tension in the

fibers of the ciliary body.

• To focus on distant objects, the controlling muscles

cause the lens to be relatively flattened.

• Similarly, these muscles allow the lens to become

thicker in order to focus on objects near the eye. 24
• The distance between the center of the lens and the
retina called the focal length varies from
approximately 17 mm to about 14 mm, as the
refractive power of the lens increases from its
minimum to its maximum.

• When the eye focuses on an object farther away the

lens exhibits its lowest refractive power.

• When the eye focuses on a nearby object, the lens is

most strongly refractive.

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• For example, the observer is looking at a tree 15 m
high at a distance of 100 m.

• If h is the height in mm of that object in the retinal

image,the geometry of Fig. yields
15/100 = h/17 or h=2.55mm.

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Light and the Electromagnetic Spectrum

• Sir Isaac Newton discovered that when a beam of

sunlight is passed through a glass prism,
• The emerging beam of light is not white but consists
instead of a continuous spectrum of colors ranging
from violet at one end to red at the other.

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The electromagnetic spectrum

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• The electromagnetic spectrum can be expressed in
terms of wavelength, frequency, or energy.

• Wavelength (l)and frequency (n)are related by the

expression

• where c is the speed of light (2.998*108 m s)

• The energy of the electromagnetic spectrum is given by

the expression E = hv

• where h is Plank”s constant

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 A Simple Image Formation Model
• Images by two-dimensional functions of the form f(x, y).

• The value or amplitude of f at spatial coordinates (x, y)

gives the intensity (brightness) of the image at that
point.

• As light is a form of energy, f(x,y) must be non zero and

finite.

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• The function f(x, y) may be characterized by two
components:

(1)the amount of source illumination incident on the

scene being viewed
(2)the amount of illumination reflected by the objects
in the scene.
• These are called the illumination and reflectance
components and are denoted by i(x, y) and r(x, y),
respectively.

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• The two functions combine as a product to
form f(x, y):

f(x, y) = i(x, y) r(x, y)

r(x, y) = 0 --- total absorption

1 --- total reflection

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• The intensity of a monochrome image f at any
coordinates (x, y) the gray level (l) of the image at
that point.

That is, l = f(x0 , y0 )

L lies in the range

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 GRAY SCALE
• The interval [Lmin , Lmax ] is called thegray scale.

• Common practice is to shift this interval numerically to

the interval [0, L-1],

• where L = 0 is considered black and

L = L-1 is considered white on the gray scale.

All intermediate values are shades of gray varying from

black to white.
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 Basic Relationships Between Pixels
• 1. Neighbors of a Pixel :-
A pixel p at coordinates (x, y) has four horizontal and vertical neighbors
whose coordinates are given by (x+1, y), (x-1, y), (x, y+1), (x, y-1)

• This set of pixels, called the 4-neighbors of p, is denoted

by N4(p).

• Each pixel is a unit distance from (x, y), and some of the
neighbors of p lie outside the digital image if (x, y) is on
the border of the image.

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 ND(p) and N8(p)
• The four diagonal neighbors of p have coordinates
(x+1, y+1), (x+1, y-1), (x-1, y+1), (x-1, y-1)
and are denoted by ND(p).

• These points, together with the 4-neighbors, arecalled the 8-

neighbors of p, denoted by N8(p).

• If some of the points in ND(p) and N8(p) fall outside the image if
(x, y) is on the border of theimage.

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Adjacency, Connectivity, Regions, and
Boundaries
•To establish whether two pixels are connected, it
must be determined if they are neighbors and
•if their gray levels satisfy a specified criterion of
similarity (say, if their gray levels are equal).

•For instance, in a binary image with values 0 and 1,

two pixels may be 4-neighbors,

•but they are said to be connected only if they have

the same value
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• Let V be the set of gray-level values used todefine
connectivity. In a binary image, V={1} for the connectivity
of pixels with value 1.

• In a grayscale image, for connectivity of pixels with a

range of intensity values of say 32, 64 V typically contains
more elements.

• For example,

• In the adjacency of pixels with a range of possible gray-

level values 0 to 255,
• set V could be any subset of these 256 values.We consider
three types of adjacency:
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 • We consider three types of adjacency:
(a) 4-adjacency.
Two pixels p and q with values from V are 4-adjacent if q is in the
set N4(p).

(b) 8-adjacency.
Two pixels p and q with values from V are 8-adjacent if q is in the
set N8(p).

(c) m-adjacency (mixed adjacency).

(d) Two pixels p and q with values from V are m-adjacent if
• (i) q is in N4(p), or

• (ii) q is in ND(p) and theset whose values are from V.

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• A path from pixel p with coordinates (x, y) to
pixel q with coordinates (s, t) is a sequence of
distinct pixels with coordinates

• where (xϬ’ y0) = (x, y) and (xŶ’ yn) = (s, t),

(xi’ yi) and (xi-ϭ’ yi-1) pixels and are adjacent for ϭ ч i ч
Ŷ. IŶ this Đase, Ŷ is the length of the path.

• If (xϬ’ y0) = (xŶ’ yn) the path is a closed path.

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 .
• Two pixels p and q are said to be connected in S if
there exists a path between them consisting
entirely of pixels in S.

• For any pixel p in S, the set of pixels that are

connected to it in S is called a connected
component of S.

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 Relations, equivalence
• A binary relation R on a set A is a set of pairs of
elements from A. If the pair (a, b) is in R, the notation
used is aRb ( ie a is related to b)

• Ex:- the set of points A = { p1,p2,p3,p4} arranged as

P1p2
P3
p4

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• In this case R is set of pairs of points from A that are 4-
connected that is R = {(p1,p2), (p2,p1), (p1,p3),
(p3,p1)} .

thus p1 is related to p2 and p1 is related to p3 and vice

versa but p4 is not related to any other point under
the relation .

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 Reflective - Symmetric - Transitive
• Reflective
if for each a in A, aRb

• Symmetric
if for each a and b in A, aRb implies bRa

• Transitive
if for a, b and c in A, aRb and bRc implies aRc

A relation satisfying the three properties is called an

equivalence relation.
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 Distance Measures
• For pixels p, q,and z,with coordinates (x, y), (s, t),and
(u, v) respectively, D is a distance function or metric if
(a) D(p, q)D;p, if p = q ),

(b) D(p, q) = D(q, p)

The Euclidean distance between p and q is defined as

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 .

• The D4 distance (also called city-block

distance) between p and q is defined as
D4 (p, q) = | x - s | + | y – t |

•For example, the pixels with D4 distance ч Ϯ

from (x, y) (the center point) form the
following contours of constant distance:

• The pixels with D4=1 are the 4-neighbors of (x, y).

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 .

•The D8 distance (also called chess board

distance)between p and q is defined as
D8 (p, q) = max ( | x - s | , | y – t | )
•For example, the pixels with D8 distance ≤ 2 froŵ ( x,
y) (the center point) form the following contours of
constant distance:

• The pixels with D8=1 are the 8-neighbors of (x, y).

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 • The Dm distance between two points 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.

• For instance, consider the following arrangement of pixels and

assume that p, p2 and p4 have value 1 and that p1 and p3 can
have a value of 0 or 1:
p3 p4
P1 p2
p

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 .

• If only connectivity of pixels valued 1 is allowed, and

p1 and p3 are 0 then the m distance between p and
p4 is 2.

• If either p1 or p3 is 1, the distance is 3

• If both pi and p2 are 1, the distance is 4

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 DIGITAL IMAGE PROCESSING
UNIT 2: IMAGE ENHANCEMENT
Process an image so that the result will be more suitable than the original
image for a application. specific
Highlighting interesting detail in images Removing noise from images
Making images more visually appealing

So, a technique for enhancement of x-ray image may not be the best for enhancement of
microscopic images.
These spatial domain processes are expressed by:

G (x,y) = T ( f(x,y) ) depends only on the value of f at (x,y)

f(x,y) is the input image, G (x,y) is the output image
T is called a gray-level or intensity transformation operator which
can apply to single image or binned images.

Window origin is moved from image origin along the

1st row and then second row etc.
At each location, the image pixel value is replaced by
the value obtained after applying T operation on the
window at the origin.
the neighborhood size may be different. We can
have a neighborhood size of 5 by 5, 7 by 7 and so on
depending upon the type of the image and the type of
operation that we want to have.
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Spatial domain techniques
Point Processing: Contrast stretching Thresholding

Intensity transformations / gray level transformations

> Image Negatives
> Log Transformations
> Power Law Transformations

Piecewise‐Linear Transformation Functions Contrast

stretching
Gray‐level slicing Bit‐plane slicing

Spatial filters
Smoothening filters Low pass filters Median filters
Sharpening filters High boost filters
Derivative filters

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Mask/Filter
Neighborhood of a point (x,y)
can be defined by using a
square/rectangular (common
used) or circular subimage
area centered at (x,y)
The center of the
subimage
is moved from pixel to pixel
starting at the top of the
corner

Spatial Processing :
intensity transformation -> works on single pixel for
contrast manipulation

image thresholding

spatial filtering  Image sharpening ( working on

neighborhood of every pixel) or Neighborhood
Processing:

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Thresholding (piece wise linear transformation)

Produce a two-level (binary) image

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