Digital Image Processing

Teachers Activity Report Submitted by ANUBHAV Nirgudkar Pranav CHATTORAJ

Roll no.9 SYBSc(CS) Div 49 Roll No 49 SYBSc (CS)Div A A

Fergusson College Pune

Introduction
This report is based on the guest lecture delivered by Dr Mrinal Puranik of Persistent Systems Ltd, Pune. Digital image processing is a branch of digital signal processing for which the input is an image. An image is a two-dimensional representation of optical data acquired from a camera or scanner. This data may be visual, or it may be infrared, sonar, or radar. For digital image processing, the image must be represented in digital form. A digital image is generally considered a grid of pixels, where the value associated with each pixel denotes its colour or its brightness (intensity). Digital image processing nds applications in a wide variety of elds, including medicine, computer vision, image compression and transmission, security, remote sensing, meteorology, etc. It can be used for image enhancement, image restoration, pattern recognition, etc.

Basic operations of DIP

This section will cover some basic digital imaging processing operations on monochromatic (grayscale) images. A grayscale image can be represented as a grid of pixels, where the value associated with each pixel denotes its intensity (i.e., a higher value indicates a darker shade).

Thresholding
Thresholding is the simplest method of image segmentation. From a grayscale image, thresholding can be used to create binary (black and white) images. During the thresholding process, individual pixels in an image are marked as "object" pixels if their value is greater than some threshold value (assuming an object to be brighter than the background) and as "background" pixels otherwise. Typically, an object pixel is given a value of 1 while a background pixel is given a value of 0. Finally, a binary image is created by colouring each pixel white or black, depending on a pixels labels.

Figure 1: Thresholding

Figure 2: Histogram equalization 3

Figure 3: Edge detection

Histogram equalization
Histogram equalization is a method of increasing the contrast of an image. We construct a histogram of the various intensities in the image. We now transform the image into a new image, such that its histogram has the same shape, but its cumulative histogram is linear across the entire value scale. This increases the range of intensities (grey levels) in the image, thereby increasing contrast. However, it also adds noise.

Edge detection
Edge detection is an operation that attempts to nd the edges present in an image. This is accomplished by identifying the points in the image where the image brightness changes rapidly (i.e., has discontinuities).

Noise removal
Noise removal is an operation that attempts to remove noise from an image. The simplest algorithms for the same involve replacing the intensity of each pixel by the average or the median of the intensities of the neighbouring pixels. Noise removal algorithms tend to blur the image.

Image sharpening

Figure 4: Noise removal

Image sharpening is an operation which makes edges more visible, thereby increasing the contrast of an image. Like histogram equalization, this operation also adds noise to the image.

Figure 5: Image sharpening

Applications of DIP
Digital image processing nds applications in a vast variety of elds, only a small portion of which are summarised here.

Biometric authentication/identication
Digital image processing can be used for facial recognition, ngerprint recognition or iris recognition to verify the identity of an individual. Such systems are used to by rms control access to restricted facilities (e.g. Googles data centres), by individuals to secure personal devices (e.g. most laptops), and by governments to provide unique identication (e.g. Indias Aadhar scheme) or to facilitate international travel without passports (e.g. the US-Canadian NEXUS project). Fingerprint identication is also used in forensics: A ngerprint found at a crime scene can be matched against a database of millions of ngerprints to identify the suspect.

Security
Automatic number plate recognition is used to automatically read the number plate of a vehicle. It is used by law enforcement in several countries, such as the USA, UK, Turkey, etc. to identify vehicles.

Figure 6: Detecting abandoned objects

Figure 7: Detecting removed objects 7

Digital image processing can also be used to detect abandoned/removed objects. A removed object may indicate theft, while an abandoned object may have been forgotten or lost by its owner. In either case, the system can send an alert to the concerned person/authority. Similarly, an automatic train undercarriage detection system developed by Gatekeeper Systems, based in the USA, detects the presence of objects attached to the bottom of a train carriage. The hardware (camera) is placed in between the rails. As each carriage passes over it, an image is captured and compared with a reference image.

Biological applications
Disease detection
Digital image processing can be used for disease detection. For instance, the leaf colour of a plant can indicate the health of the plant: infection results in degradation of the leafs chlorophyll content. Similarly, a high temperature near the corners of a persons eyes indicate a fever. Given an infrared image, digital image processing can be used to identify a persons body parts and detect such indicators. Such a system was developed by Xenics in Belgium for the detection of H1N1 (swine u) in air travellers.

DNA sequencing
DNA sequencing means extracting the sequence of nucleotides (A, T, G, C) from a strand of DNA. This is done using a chemical process using gels, which produces a sheet of dierently-coloured gels depending on the nucleotide sequence. This sheet can be converted to an image, which can be processed using digital signal processing to obtain the required DNA sequence. 8

Figure 8: Converting DNA gel image to text string

Optical character recognition

Optical character recognition is the conversion of images of handwritten or printed text to electronic text. It is used to digitise books (e.g. by Google Books). This is also the rst step in text-to-speech conversion, which reads the text out loud, and thus can be used by the blind to access books.

Driving aids
Thermal imaging
Thermal imaging refers to capturing an image in the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum and converting it to a visible image. This enhances night-time visibility when driving.

Moving object detection

It detects moving objects (pedestrians/other vehicles) near the vehicles and sounds an alert if any of them is in the vehicles path. 9

Figure 9: An OCR system

Figure 10: Thermal imaging 10

Figure 11: Moving object detection

Lane departure warning system

This system detects the lane markings on the road and sounds an alert if the vehicle moves into the wrong lane.

Agriculture
Digital image processing can be used to detect weeds, which can then be sprayed with pesticides automatically. This prevents overuse pesticides and also ensures that crops are not sprayed. Wageningen University in the Netherlands is currently developing such a system.

11

Figure 12: Lane departure warning system

Figure 13: Weed detection. Straight lines indicate detected crop rows; plants in between the rows are assumed to be weeds. 12