Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J.

Jackson Lecture 1-1

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-2

 Example Bartlane transmitted image
• Specialized printing equipment
coded pictures for transmission
• Received and printed on a
telegraph printer fitted with type
faces to simulate a halftone
pattern
• Initial problems
– Poor visual quality related to
printing process and the
distribution of brightness
levels
• Image produced in 1921 from a
coded tape by a telegraph printer
with special type faces

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-3

Improved Bartlane transmitted image

• Replace the printing process
• New technique used
photographic reproduction made
from a perforated tape at the
telegraph receiving terminal
• Improvements
– tonal quality
– resolution
• Digital picture made in 1922 from
a tape punched after the signals
had crossed the Atlantic twice

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-4

 15 level Bartlane image
• Early images were transmitted
using 5 distinct brightness levels
• The process was improved in
1929 to 15 levels
• A system for developing a film
plate (as opposed to printing)
from the coded picture tape
improved the reproduction
process considerably
• Cable picture of Generals
Pershing and Foch, transmitted
in 1929 by 15-tone equipment
from London to New York

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-5

Growth in image processing

• Made possible by the advent of large-scale digital computers
• Often motivated by requirements of the space program
– Pre-Apollo and Apollo moon missions: typical requirement was to
correct various types of image distortion inherent in on-board
television cameras
– Mariner Mars flyby missions, etc.
• Image processing now used to solve many problems
• Commonly require methods capable of enhancing pictorial
information for human interpretation and analysis

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-6

 Example image processing applications
• Medical field: X-ray (or other biomedical) image
enhancement
• Aerial and satellite image enhancement: agriculture, weather
and military
• Industrial applications: computer-based product inspection
• Law enforcement: fingerprint processing, surveillance
camera processing
• Defense applications: recognizing an enemy tank in foliage,
guiding a missile in flight
• Science: enhancing an electron microscope image for
readability

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-7

Example: a cell
• Image of a cell corrupted by
electronic noise

• Result after averaging

several noisy images (a
common technique for
noise reduction)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-8

 Example: an x-ray
• An original x-ray image

• Result possible after

contrast and edge
enhancement

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-9

Example: image deblurring

• Image of a human face
blurred by uniform motion
during exposure

• Resulting image after

application of a deblurring
algorithm

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-10

 Electromagnetic Spectrum

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-11

Vivible/Infrared Imaging Example (LANDSAT)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-12

 LANDSAT Images of Washington D.C. Area

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-13

Machine perception

• Previous examples illustrate processing results

intended for human interpretation
• A second class of image processing applications is
solving problems dealing with machine perception
• In this case, interest focuses on methods for
extracting information in a form suitable for
computer processing
– Statistical moments
– Fourier transform coefficients
– Distance measures
– Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-14

 Typical problems in machine perception

• Automatic character recognition

• Industrial machine vision for product assembly and
inspection
• Military recognizance
• Automatic processing of fingerprints
• Screening of x-rays and blood samples
• Machine processing of aerial and satellite imagery
for weather prediction and crop assessment

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-15

Digital image representation

• Monochrome image (or simply image) refers to a 2-

dimensional light intensity function f(x,y)
– x and y denote spatial coordinates
– the value of f(x,y) at (x,y) is proportional to the brightness
(or gray level) of the image at that point
Origin y

f(x,y)

x
Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-16
 Digital image

• A digital image is an image f(x,y) that has been

discretized both in spatial coordinates and in
brightness
• Considered as a matrix whose row and column
indices represent a point in the image
• The corresponding matrix element value represents
the gray level at that point
• The elements of such an array are referred to as:
– image elements
– picture elements (pixels or pels)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-17

Steps in image processing

• The problem domain in this example consists of pieces of
mail and the objective is to read the address on each piece
• Step 1: image acquisition
– Acquire a digital image using an image sensor
• a monochrome or color TV camera: produces an entire image of the
problem domain every 1/30 second
• a line-scan camera: produces a single image line at a time, motion past
the camera produces a 2-dimensional image
– If not digital, an analog-to-digital conversion process is required
– The nature of the image sensor (and the produced image) are
determined by the application
• Mail reading applications rely greatly on line-scan cameras
• CCD and CMOS imaging sensors are very common in many
applications

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-18

 Steps in image processing (continued)

• Step 2: preprocessing
– Key function: improve the image in ways that increase the
chance for success of the other processes
– In the mail example, may deal with contrast
enhancement, removing noise, and isolating regions
whose texture indicates a likelihood of
alphanumeric information

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-19

Steps in image processing (continued)

• Step 3: segmentation
– Broadly defined: breaking an image into its constituent parts
– In general, one of the most difficult tasks in image processing
• Good segmentation simplifies the rest of the problem
• Poor segmentation make make the task impossible
– Output is usually raw pixel data: may represent region boundaries,
points in the region itself, etc.
• Boundary representation can be useful when the focus is on external
shape characteristics (e.g. corners, rounded edges, etc.)
• Region representation is appropriate when the focus is on internal
properties (e.g. texture or skeletal shape)
– For the mail problem (character recognition) both representations can
be necessary

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-20

 Steps in image processing (continued)

• Step 4: representation & description

– Representation: transforming raw data into a form
suitable for computer processing
– Description (also called feature extraction) deals with
extracting features that result in some quantitative
information of interest or features which are basic for
differentiating one class of objects from another
– In terms of character recognition, descriptors such as
lakes (holes) and bays help differentiate one part of the
alphabet from another

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-21

Steps in image processing (continued)

• Step 5: recognition & interpretation

– Recognition: The process which assigns a label to an
object based on the information provided by its
descriptors
may be the alphanumeric character A
– Interpretation: Assigning meaning to an ensemble of
recognized objects
35487-0286 may be a ZIP code

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-22

 Steps in image processing (continued)

Representation
Segmentation
& description

Preprocessing
Result
Knowledge Recognition
Base & Interpretation
Image
Acquisition

Problem
Domain

Electrical Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-23

&
Compute
r
Engineeri
ng

Image Processing Steps

(according to text chapters)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-24

 The knowledge base

• Knowledge about a problem domain is coded into

an image processing system in the form of a
knowledge database
– May be simple:
• detailing areas of an image expected to be of interest
– May be complex
• A list of all possible defects of a material in a vision inspection
system
– Guides operation of each processing module
– Controls interaction between modules
– Provides feedback through the system

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-25

Steps in an image processing system

• Not all image processing systems would require all

steps/processing modules
– Image enhancement for human visual perception may not
go beyond the preprocessing stage
• A knowledge database may not be required
• Processing systems which include recognition and
interpretation are associated with image analysis
systems in which the objective is autonomous (or at
least partially automatic)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-26

 Organization of the book and course

• Three broad topic areas:

– Background
• Introduction
• Visual perception, resolution, imaging geometry
• Image transforms
– Preprocessing
• Image enhancement techniques
• Image restoration techniques
– Analysis
• Segmentation
• Representation & description
• Recognition & interpretation

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-27

Assignment for next class period

• Read Chapter 1
• Surf the internet and find one good site devoted to
image processing and email the site URL to
jjackson@eng.ua.edu
– Provide a brief, one paragraph, summary of the site
• Make sure your Bama email account is functioning
properly
• Secure PC and/or workstation account from the
college of engineering
– Should already be active

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. D. J. Jackson Lecture 1-28