Assignment

Digital Image Processing

Topic: Key Stages in Digital Image Processing
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Key Stages in Digital Image Processing

There are various stages involved in Digital Image Processing (DIP), which are listed
below.
1. Image Acquisition
2. Image Enhancement
3. Image Restoration
4. Morphological Processing
5. Segmentation Processing
6. Representation and Description
7. Object Recognition and Interpretation
8. Colour Image Processing
9. Image Compression

Now we will explain each of the above stages one by one here below:
1. Image Acquisition

Image Acquisition is the first stage of any vision system. In this stage image is
captured by a sensor (i.e. Camera). This stage is very important because the
success of all other stages depends on this stage, if the image has not been
acquired satisfactorily then the intended tasks may not be achievable.
Example of Image Acquisition: Capturing image by using a Digital Camera
2. Image Enhancement
Image enhancement is the second fundamental step in DIP. Image Enhancement
would mean generally improve the picture quality.
For example better contrast. Sharpen it. Make the colours brighter. Correct the
histogram and so on. This does not necessarily need imagination of a human being.
You can just run a filter.
3. Image Restoration
This area deals with the improving the appearance of an image. Image restoration is
the operation of taking a corrupt/noisy image and estimating the clean,
original image. Corruption may come in many forms such as motion blur, noise and
camera mis-focus. Image restoration in general can mean to repair an image.

For example: Remove noise. Remove cracks. Or recreating missing parts. This
needs also imagination of the rest-orator. To restore missing parts, you have to do it
manually.

4. Morphological Processing
Morphology is a technique of image processing bases on shapes. It deals with tools for
extracting image components that are useful in the representation & description of shape. In
morphological processing of images, pixels are added or removed from the images.
The structure and shape of the objects are analyzed so that they can be identified.
The basic operations in this processing are binary convolution and correlation, that is
based on logical operations rather than arithmetic operations. The objective of using
morphological operations is to remove the imperfections in the structure of image.

5. Segmentation Processing
 Segmentation refers to the process of partitioning a digital image into multiple
segments (sets of pixels, also known as super pixels). The goal of segmentation is
to simplify and/or change the representation of an image into something that is more
meaningful and easier to analyze. Image segmentation is typically used to locate
objects and boundaries (lines, curves, etc.) in images.
For example, a common application of image segmentation in medical imaging is
to detect and label pixels in an image or voxels of a 3D volume that represent
a tumour in a patient’s brain or other organs.
6. Representation and Description
After an image is segmented into regions, the resulting aggregate of segmented
pixels is represented and described for further computer processing.
Representation involves two choices:
 In terms of its external characteristics (boundary)
 In terms of internal characteristics (pixel comprising the region)
Next task is to describe the region based on representation.
Example: a region may be represented by its boundary is boundary is described
by features such as its length, the orientation of straight line joining its extreme
points and the number of concavities in the boundary.
7. Object Recognition and Interpretation
It is a process that assigns a label (e.g. vehicle) to an object based on its descriptor.
Methods for recognition of individual objects. An object recognition system finds
objects in the real world from an image of the world. Object recognition consists of
 recognizing, identifying, and locating objects within a picture with a given degree of
confidence.

8. Colour Image Processing

Colour Image Processing deals with pseudo colour and full colour image processing.
It includes processing of color images and different color spaces that are used.
For Example, RGB color model, YCbCr.

9. Image Compression
It involves in developing some functions to perform this operation. It mainly deals with
image size or resolution. Image compression is defined as the process of reducing the
amount of data needed to. represent a digital image. This is done by removing the
redundant data. The objective of image compression is to decrease the number of bits
required to store and transmit without any measurable loss of information.

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