Design, Testing And Implementation Of Digital Image Processing Systems For Viable Solutions

Digital image processing is an area characterized by the need for extensive experimental work to establish the viability of proposed solutions to a given problem.  An important characteristic underlying the design of image processing systems is the significant level of testing & experimentation that normally is required before arriving at an acceptable solution. This characteristic implies that the ability to formulate approaches & quickly prototype candidate solutions generally plays a major role in reducing the cost & time required to arrive at a viable system implementation.

An image may be defined as a two-dimensional function f (x, y), where x & y are spatial coordinates, & the amplitude off   at any pair of coordinates (x, y) is called the intensity or gray level of the image at that point.  When x, y & the amplitude values of   f   are all finite discrete quantities, we call the image a digital image. The field of DIP refers to processing digital image by means of digital computer. The digital image is composed of a finite number of elements, each of which has a particular location & value. The elements are called pixels.

Vision is the most advanced of our sensor, so it is not surprising that image plays the single most important role in human perception. However, unlike humans, who are limited to the visual band of the EM spectrum imaging machines cover almost the entire EM spectrum, ranging from gamma to radio waves. They can operate also on images generated by sources that humans are not accustomed to associating with image.

There is no general agreement among authors regarding where image processing stops & other related areas such as image analysis& computer vision start. Sometimes a distinction is made by defining image processing as a discipline in which both the input & output of a process are images. This is limiting & somewhat artificial boundary. The area of image analysis (image understanding) is in between image processing & computer vision.

There are no clear-cut boundaries in the continuum from image processing at one end to complete vision at the other. However, one useful paradigm is to consider three types of computerized processes in this continuum: low-, mid-, & high-level processes. Low-level process involves primitive operations such as image processing to reduce noise, contrast enhancement & image sharpening. A low- level process is characterized by the fact that both its inputs & outputs are images. Mid-level process on images involves tasks such as segmentation, a description of that object to reduce them to a form suitable for computer processing & classification of individual objects. A mid-level process is characterized by the fact that its inputs generally are images but its outputs are attributes extracted from those images. Finally higher- level   processing involves “Making sense” of an ensemble of recognized objects, as in image analysis & at the far end of the continuum performing the cognitive functions normally associated with human vision.

Digital image processing, as already defined is used successfully in a broad range of areas of exceptional social & economic value.