Explain with neat block diagram the steps involved in compressing a video signal

10 marks question Sep 2010

Sep 2010
Discuss the following
Simultaneous contrast 5 marks Optical Illusion 5 marks

10 Marks Sep 2010

What is image segmentation? Describe briefly thresholding and adaptive thresholding? (3+3+4)

Introduction
Segmentation is a very important image analysis pre-processing step. Note - in image analysis the inputs are images but the outputs are attributes extracted from these images.

More points
Segmentation is mostly based on rather ad hoc methods. Segmentation usually makes sense in a scope of a particular application.
Segmentation depends on an application, its semantics. Methods are not universally applicable to all images.

Video On Fundamentals

Image segmentation approach

Image segmentation algorithms are based on one of the two basic properties of intensity values
discontinuity and similarity.

Discontinuity
The assumption is that boundaries of regions are sufficiently different from each other and from the background to allow boundary detection based on local discontinuities in intensity. Edge-based segmentation is the principal approach used in this category.

Continued .
Similarity
Region based segmentation approaches in the second category are based on partitioning an image into regions that are similar according to a set of predefined criteria.

Thresholding
Thresholding is a fundamental approach that is quite popular when speed is an important factor.
Threshold-based, according to a global property, usually intensity, where the global knowledge is represented by the intensity histogram.

How it works
Whereas the conventional thresholding operator uses a global threshold for all pixels, adaptive thresholding changes the threshold dynamically over the image. This more sophisticated version of thresholding can accommodate changing lighting conditions in the image, e.g.those occurring as a result of a strong illumination gradient or shadows. Adaptive thresholding typically takes a grayscale or color image as input and, in the simplest implementation, outputs a binary imagerepresenting the segmentation. For each pixel in the image, a threshold has to be calculated. If the pixel value is below the threshold it is set to the background value, otherwise it assumes the foreground value.

Two main approaches to finding the threshold: (i) the Chow and Kanenko approach and (ii) local thresholding.

Basis - The assumption behind both methods is that smaller image regions are more likely to have approximately uniform illumination, thus being more suitable for thresholding.

(i) the Chow and Kanenko approach and (ii) local thresholding
the Chow and Kanenko approach
the image is divided into an array of overlapping sub images and then find the optimum threshold for each sub image by investigating its histogram.

local thresholding
statistically examine the intensity values of the local neighborhood of each pixel.

10 marks
Explain JPEG compression

JPEG Compression (
The steps include the DCT part in the next question, so read in continuation

Lossless and lossy image compression The JPEG process is a widely used form of lossy image compression that centers around the DCT

JPEG Compression process

Subsampling
JPEG uses 4:2:0 subsampling scheme. This scheme subsamples in both the horizontal and vertical directions by a factor two. Theoretically. An average chroma pixel is positioned between the rows and columns

Subsampling YCrCb

Sep 2010 10 marks

Discuss the working principle of DCT in image compression

DCT - Introduction
The discrete cosine transform (DCT) is a technique for converting a signal into elementary frequency components. It is widely used in image compression All three of the following standards employ a basic technique known as the discrete cosine transform (DCT). Developed by Ahmed, Natarajan, and Rao [1974], the DCT is a close relative of the discrete Fourier transform (DFT).
JPEG For compression of still images MPEG For compression of motion video H.261 - For compression of video telephony and teleconferencing

JPEG and DCT

Psychophysical experts suggests that humans are much less likely to notice the loss of very high spatial frequency components than lower frequency components. JPEG uses DCT to basically reduce the high frequency contents and then efficiently code the result into a bit string. As frequency becomes higher it becomes less important and the coefficient may be set to zero.

DCT
Each image is subdivided into 8x8 blocks and 2 D DCT is applied to each block image f( i,j), with output being the DCT co-efficients F (u,v) for each block.

The Two-Dimensional DCT

The one-dimensional DCT is useful in processing one-dimensional signals such as speech waveforms. For analysis of twodimensional (2D) signals such as images, we need a 2D version of the DCT. For an n x m matrix s, the 2D DCT is computed in a simple way: The 1D DCT is applied to each row of s and then to each column of the result. Thus, the transform of s is given by

The DCT Equation

The DCT Matrix

Doing the DCT on 8*8 block

Performing DCT (Final Step)

JPEG Compression continue

JPEG Compression continue

JPEG Compression continue

Sep 2010 10 marks

What are the differences between smoothing and sharpening filters? Explain with an example

Image enhancements

Smoothing
Image sensors and transmission channels may produce certain type of noise characterized by random and isolated pixels with out-of-range gray levels, which are either much lower or higher than the gray levels of the neighboring pixels. The challenge is to distinguish between the details (small features, edges, lines, etc.) in the image and this type of isolated and out-of-range noise, with the goal to keep the former while suppressing the latter.

Smoothing Domain Filters

Smoothing Domain Filters Edges and other sharp transitions (such as noise) in the gray levels of an image contribute significantly to the high frequency content of its Fourier transform. Hence smoothing (blurring) is achieved in the frequency domain by attenuating a specified range of high frequency components in the transform of a given image. Low pass filtering would be part of preprocessing stage for an image analysis system looking for features in an image bank. Low-pass filters reveal underlying two-dimensional waveform with a long wavelength or low frequency image contrast at the expense of higher spatial frequencies. Low-frequency information allows the identification of the background pattern, and produces an output image in which the detail has been smoothed or removed from the original. Choosing the median value from the moving window does a better job of suppressing noise and preserving edges than the mean filter [3-4].

Sharpening
As the opposite of smoothing operations, image sharpening has the goal to enhance the details (the high spatial frequency components) of the image. A high-pass filtered image can be obtained as the difference between the original image and its lowpass filtered version.

Sharpening Domain Filters

Image sharpening can be achieved in the frequency domain by high pass filtering process. Simply subtracting the low-frequency image resulting from a low pass filter from the original image can enhance high spatial frequencies. High -frequency information allows us either to isolate or to amplify the local detail. If the high-frequency detail is amplified by adding back to the image some multiple of the high frequency component extracted by the filter, then the result is a sharper, de-blurred image. The above two approaches can be implemented in the following manner: The Fourier transform of an image, as expressed by the amplitude spectrum is a breakdown of the image into its frequency or scale components. Filtering of these components use frequency domain filters that operate on the amplitude spectrum of an image and remove, attenuate or amplify the amplitudes in specified wavebands. The frequency domain can be represented as a 2-dimensional scatter plot known as a Fourier spectrum, in which lower frequencies fall at the center and progressively higher frequencies are plotted outward [3-6]. Filtering in the frequency domain consists of 3 steps: 1. Obtain the Fourier transform the original image and compute the Fourier spectrum. 2. Select appropriate filter transfer function and multiply by the elements of the Fourier spectrum. (Here the transfer function is the standard Gaussian and Butterworth filters as low and high pass filters with varying input arguments. The filter order and value of sigma have been selected by default as 1 and 10 respectively). 3 .Perform an inverse Fourier transform to return to the spatial domain for display

Continued .
Refer the slides 04 Enhancement - Spatial Filtering - Ch3

Sep 2010
3B Discuss the principle of line detection in images. (10 Marks) Refer the external PPT - 09 Image Segmentation - Part I - Ch10.pdf

Sep 2010
Q 2B - What is morphological image processing? Explain any two basic operations. (2+4+4) Answer Please refer the PDF 11 Morphological IP - Ch9.pdf

Sep 2010
Q 2A - What is Bit Plane image slicing? Explain the procedure of performing bit plane slicing?

Sep 2010
1A What are intensity and spatial resolution of an image? Explain.

Spatial Resolution
Spatial resolution is a measure of the smallest discernible detail in an image. Quantitatively, spatial resolution can be stated as
Line pairs per unit distance Dots (pixels) per unit distance

Image resolution definition

The largest number of discernible line pairs per unit distance. In U.S. we call this as dpi (dots per inch) E.g. newspaper with resolution 75 dpi Book page 2400 dpi

Spatial Resolution Cont

To be meaningful, measures of spatial resolution must be stated with respect to spatial units. Image size by itself doesn t tell the complete story. To say that an image has, say, a resolution 1024 * 1024 pixels is not a meaningful statement without stating the spatial dimensions encompassed by the image.

Intensity resolution
Intensity resolution similarly refers to the smallest discernible change in intensity level. We have considerable discretion regarding the number of samples used to generate a digital image, but this is not true regarding the number of intensity levels. Based on hardware considerations, the number of intensity levels usually is a an integer power of two. The most common number is 8 bits.

Intensity resolution cont

Unlike spatial resolution, which must be based on a per unit of distance basis to be meaningful, it is common practice to refer to the number of bits used to quantize intensity as the intensity resolution. For example, it is common to say that an image whose intensity is quantized into 256 levels has 8 bits of intensity resolution. True discernible changes in intensity are influenced not only by noise and saturation values but also by the capabilities of human perception.

Sep 2010
1B What is two dimensional Discrete Fourier Transform? Why frequency domain image analysis is very important? Explain. (2+ 4+ 4)

Why frequency domain image analysis is very important