Images and Imaging Operations
Images are at the core of vision, and there are many ways—from simple to sophisticated—to process and analyze them. This chapter concentrates on simple algorithms, which nevertheless need to be treated carefully, for important subtleties needto be learned. Aboveall, thechapteraimstoshowthatquitea lot can be achieved with such algorithms, which can readily be programmed and tested by the reader.
• the different types of images—binary, gray-scale, and color.
• a useful, compact notation for presenting image processing operations.
• basic pixel operations—clearing, copying, inverting, thresholding.
• basic window operations—shifting, shrinking, expanding.
• gray-scale brightening and contrast-stretching operations.
• binary edge location and noise removal operations.
• multi-image and convolution operations.
• the distinction between sequential and parallel operations, and complications that can arise in the sequential case.
Though elementary, this chapter provides the basic methodology for the whole of Part 1 and much of Part 2 of the book, and its importance should not be underestimated; neither should the subtleties be ignored. Full understanding at this stage will save many complications later, when one is programming more sophisticated algorithms. In particular, obvious fundamental difficulties arise when applying a sequence of window operations to the same original image.