When a signal varies with time, we are usually concerned not only

with its magnitude but also with how it changes.

Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) take real-world signals like voice,
audio, video, temperature, pressure, or position that have been
digitized and then mathematically manipulate them. A DSP is
designed for performing mathematical functions like "add",
"subtract", "multiply" and "divide" very quickly.
Signals need to be processed so that the information that they contain
can be displayed, analyzed, or converted to another type of signal that
may be of use. In the real-world, analog products detect signals such
as sound, light, temperature or pressure and manipulate them.
Converters such as an Analog-to-Digital converter then take the real-
world signal and turn it into the digital format of 1's and 0's. From
here, the DSP takes over by capturing the digitized information and
processing it. It then feeds the digitized information back for use in
the real world. It does this in one of two ways, either digitally or in an
analog format by going through a Digital-to-Analog converter. All of
this occurs at very high speeds.
DSP would perform other functions such as volume control,
equalization and user interface.
Out of all these signals, the field that deals with the type of signals for
which the input is an image and the output is also an image is done in
image processing. As it name suggests, it deals with the processing on
images.
It can be further divided into analog image processing and digital
image processing.
Signal and Systems:
- Signal is represented mathematically as functions of one or more
independent variables.
- Digital signal processing deals with the transformation of signal that
are discrete in both amplitude and time.
- Discrete time signal is represented mathematically as sequence of
numbers.
Transforms are a powerful tool for simplifying the analysis of signals
Most commonly transforms that used in communications engineering
are:
-Laplace transforms (Continuous in Time & Frequency)
-Continuous Fourier transforms (Continuous in Time)
-Discrete Fourier transforms (Discrete in Time)
-Z transforms (Discrete in Time & Frequency)
Signal processing
It is concerned with the representation, transformation, and
manipulation of signals and the information they contain.
Signal Processing refers to the science of analyzing time-varying
physical process.

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 There are two category of signal processing:
 Analog Signal Processing
 The term is used to describe a waveform that is continuous in
time and can take a continuous range of amplitude values. It will be
more correct to say continuous signal processing.
 Digital Signal Processing (DSP)
A digital signal, which is discrete-time-signal, is not represented
by a continuous waveform and the discrete-time signal quantities.
The amplitude that we know one amplitude value of signal at discrete
instants in time.
Sampling and reconstruction
Sampling represents the image by measurements at regularly spaced
sample intervals.
Sampling interval
• distance between sample points or pixels
Sampling Theory
A signal can be reconstructed from its samples if the signal contains no
frequencies above ½ the sampling frequency.The minimum sampling
rate for a band limited signal is called the Nyquist rate

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 Spectral Analysis
Any (spatial, time) domain signal (function) can be written as a sum
of periodic functions (Fourier)

Spatial (time) domain: Frequency domain:

Fourier Transform
• A transform takes one function (or signal) and turns it into another
function (or signal)
– An important image processing tool which is used to
decompose an image into its sine and cosine components.
– Output of the transform represents the image in the Fourier
or frequency domain.
– In the Fourier domain image, each point represents a
particular frequency contained in the spatial domain image.

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– Applications: image analysis, image filtering, image
reconstruction and image compression
Continuous Fourier Transform:

Inverse Fourier transform

Where,

i= , n= the time-domain index of the input samples, n=0,1,2,3,

……,N-1

N=the number of samples of the input sequence and the number of

frequency points in o/p.

Why is FT Useful?
• Easier to remove undesirable frequencies.
• Faster perform certain operations in the frequency domain than in
the spatial domain.

DSP Applications – digital image processing (DIP)

Processing

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 Image compression
 Pattern recognition
 Ghost cancellation
 Noise reduction
 Deblurring
 Object tracking
 Image fusion
What are analog images?
A natural image is a continuous, 2-dimensional distribution of brightness
(or some other physical effect).
f(x,y): A two-dimensional function, where x and y are spatial
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.
• The original image is a multidimensional physical parameter
(colour intensity, electromagnetic radiation)

What are digital images?

An image is a 2-d rectilinear array of
pixels
A pixel is a sample of a continuous
function

Properties of digital Images

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Spatial resolution
 Width pixels/width cm and height pixels/ height cm
Intensity resolution
 Intensity bits/intensity range (per channel)
Number of channels
 RGB is 3 channels, grayscale is one channel
The number of pixels in the image is called the resolution of the image.

The structure of 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
Pixel values typically represent gray levels, colours, heights, opacities
etc
The 2-D image
• The digital image (2D) is a matrix defined by
– its resolution (amount of pixels)
– its depth (amount of potential values for each pixel)
– its palette (colour look up table (CLUT))
Sampling

• Must be achieved at a frequency superior to 2 times the highest

frequency in the signal (Nyquist frequency)

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• Or the original image has to be filtered at a frequency below the
half of the sampling frequency

Conversion of natural images into digital form involves two key

processes, jointly referred to as digitisation:
Sampling
Quantisation
Sampling
Sampling represents the image by measurements at regularly spaced
sample intervals.
Quantisation
Quantisation uses an ADC (analogue to digital converter) to transform
brightness values into a range of integer numbers, 0 to M, where M is
limited by the ADC and the computer.

Where m is the number of bits used to represent the value of each

pixel. This determines the number of grey levels.
Too few bits results in steps between grey levels being apparent.
Image Restoration
The main objective of restoration is to improve the quality of a digital
image which has been degraded due to various phenomena like:
• Motion
• Improper focusing during image acquisition.

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• Noise
Image restoration suppresses image degradation using knowledge
about its nature.
The objective of image restoration is to reconstruct the original image
from its degraded version.
We can restore the image if we know the Fourier transform of the
degradation function.
Image Segmentation
Segmentation is the process of partitioning a digital image into
multiple segments (sets of pixels, also known as super pixels) that
strongly correlate with the objects in an image. 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.
Some of the practical applications of image segmentation are:
o Locate tumors and other pathologies
o Measure tissue volumes
o Study of anatomical structure
 Accurate and reliable subcortical segmentation is a requirement for
volumetric and morphometric studies of neuro-degenerative diseases.

Edge detection
An edge is a set of connected pixels that lie on the boundary between
two regions. Region boundaries and edges are closely related, since

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 there is often a sharp adjustment in intensity at the region boundaries.
Edge detection techniques have therefore been used as the base of
another segmentation technique.

Edge Detection Image Original MRI Image of Heart

Filters
• Filters are signal conditioners
• Filter functions by accepting an input signal, blocking prespecified
frequency components and passing the original signal minus those
components to the output.
Filter Types
• Lowpass- Allows only low frequency signals to its outputs.
• Highpass-Allows only high frequency signals to its outputs.
• Bandpass-Allows only output signals within its narrow,
government-authorized range of frequency spectrum.
• Bandstop-Allows both low and high frequencies, but blocks a
predefined range of frequencies.

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Digital scan converter (DSC)
Digital scan converter is the most important part of the medical
equipment
Digital Scan Converter = image memory storage area # of pixels in
matrix=better spatial resolution, 8 bit=1 byte=256 shades of gray,
color needs 24 bis/pixel, 3 byte
The heart of the image storage component is the digital scan
converter.
A scan converter is used to convert the demodulated echo-amplitude
information from the receiver along with echo-position information
(based on timing), from its original format into a signal format that
can be fed to a standard video display monitor or recording device.

During the conversion process, the information is temporarily stored

in the scan converter's digital memory. The digital memory is an
electronic device that stores discrete signals. Employing multiple
digital memories permits “cine-loop”, which is the real-time
recording and playback of multiple image frames.
The echo amplitude and position information is normally analog
which means that it does not represent discrete values. Before being
fed to the scan converter’s digital memory, it must be converted to a
digital format.

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During the conversion to digital, discrete shades of gray are assigned
to the incoming echo amplitudes. This process is called pre
processing. Selectable pre processing (on some systems) permits the
operator to vary the texture of the displayed image. Because pre
processing occurs prior to the digital memory, changing the selection
will not affect any image information once it is stored. Edge
enhancement is a form of pre processing that sharpens the borders of
a structure.

The accuracy of assignment of gray scale levels to B-mode

amplitudes depends on the number of
bits (binary digits) of information that
can be stored in the digital memory for
each horizontal, vertical location.
In a digital memory, based on a binary
number system, the number of gray shades is equal to 2n , where n =
the number of bits (binary digits) in the memory.
A typical digital memory is configured with an image-matrix memory
size of 512 x 512 which represents the number of rows and columns
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of digital picture elements, or pixels. The greater the matrix size
(greater pixel density), the better the spatial resolution. Each pixel in a
512 x 512 matrix represents one of 262,144 discrete horizontal-
vertical echo locations, each displayed as a specific shade of gray.
Pre-processing
Pre-processing refers to the manipulation of the scan data before it is
stored in computer memory (scan converter). Any manipulation of
this data can be called preprocessing.
Examples of pre-processing functions are TGC, selective
enhancement,
log compression, edge enhancement and write zoom. In many
systems, the relative amplitudes of the echoes can be changed so that
alternative shades of gray are used in the display.
Persistence (frame averaging):
The number of frames which are mathematically added to produce
each image. Higher persistence tends to suppress noise but can cause
motion artifacts. It is from preprocessing
Dynamic Range Dynamic Range- Refers to the range of echoes
processed and displayed by the system, from strongest to weakest.
WRITE ZOOM (modern method) Write zoom (also called regional
expansion) is applied during data collection. The operator designates
a region in the image to be magnified, usually with a cursor box.
It increases line density & pixels/unit area but decreases field of view

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Post-processing
Post-processing operations enable the sonographer to manipulate the
image data after it has been stored in the scan converter but before it
is displayed on the video display screen.
Image data stored in the memory (scan converter) are converted back
to analog signals and sent to a video monitor for display.
Examples of Post-processing:
- Grayscale assignment, example, by changing this function, pixels
with similar values over a narrow range can be displayed with
different brightness levels, thus allowing them to be distinguished
from one another on the display.
- Read zoom is a display magnification technique that is applied to
the scan data after collection. The "zoomed" image usually appears
fuzzier or unfocused compared to a write zoom image
- Black and white inversion is a display manipulation technique that
reverses white and black in the exhibited image.

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