Introduction - Introduction to Video and Image Processing - page 1

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Introduction

If you look at the image in Fig. 1.1 you can see three children. The two oldest
children look content with life, while the youngest child looks a bit puzzled. We
can detail this description further using adjectives, but we will never ever be able to
present a textual description, which encapsulates all the details in the image. This
fact is normally referred to as “ a picture is worth a thousand words ”.
So, our eyes and our brain are capable of extracting detailed information far
beyond what can be described in text, and it is this ability we want to replicate in
the “seeing computer”. To this end a camera replaces the eyes and the (video and
image) processing software replaces the human brain. The purpose of this topic is
to present the basics within these two topics; cameras and video/image processing.
Cameras have been around for many years and were initially developed with the
purpose of “freezing” a part of the world, for example to be used in newspapers. For
a long time cameras were analog, meaning that the video and images were captured
on film. As digital technology matured, the possibility of digital video and images
arose, and video and image processing became relevant and necessary sciences.

Fig. 1.1 An image
containing three children