An Introduction to Digital Image Processing "A picture is worth a thousand words".

An image is a two-dimensional representation or projection of objects in a real scene. Images are produced by a variety of physical devices. The still and video cameras, x-ray devices, electron microscopes, radar, and ultrasound scanners are some devices used to produce images. These Imaging methods are used in variety of applications, including entertainment, medical, business (e.g. documents), industrial, military, civil (e.g. traffic), security, and scientific. In each case images are used by an observer, human or machine, to extract useful information about the scene being imaged. Often the raw image is not directly suitable for this purpose, and must be processed in some way. The processing mainly falls in to following categories. i. ii. iii. Improvement of pictorial information for human interpretation. Such processing is called image enhancement. Processing of images to extract information contained is called image analysis. Processing of Images for data storage, transmission and representation for autonomous machine perception. Enhancement and analysis are distinguished by their output, images vs. scene information. Most digital images represent continuous natural images. Exceptions are artificial digital images such as test patterns that are numerically created in the computer and images constructed by tomographic systems. Thus, it is important to understand the physics of image formation by sensors and optical systems including human visual perception. Another important consideration is the measurement of light in order quantitatively to describe images. Finally, it is useful to establish spatial and

temporal characteristics of continuous image fields, which provide the basis for the interrelationship of digital image samples. These topics are covered in the following chapters.