Image Processing Reference
In-Depth Information
1
Introduction
1.1
Overview
This is where we start, by looking at the human visual system to investigate what is meant
by vision, then on to how a computer can be made to sense pictorial data and then how we
can process it. The overview of this chapter is shown in Table
1.1
; you will find a similar
overview at the start of each chapter. We have not included the references (citations) in any
overview, you will find them at the end of each chapter.
Table 1.1
Overview of Chapter 1
Main topic
Sub topics
Main points
Human
How the
eye
works, how visual
Sight, lens, retina, image, colour,
vision
information
is
processed
and
monochrome, processing, brain,
system
how it can
fail
.
illusions.
Computer
How electronic
images
are formed,
Picture elements, pixels, video standard,
vision
how
video
is fed into a
computer
camera technologies, pixel technology,
systems
and how we can
process
the infor-
performance effects, specialist cameras,
mation using a computer.
video conversion, computer languages,
processing packages.
Mathematical
How we can process images using
Ease, consistency, support, visualisation
systems
mathematical packages
; intro-
of results, availability, introductory use,
duction to the
Matlab
and
Mathcad
example worksheets.
systems.
Literature
Other
textbooks
and other places to
Magazines, textbooks, websites and
find
information
on image proces-
this topic's website.
sing, computer vision and feature
extraction.
1.2
Human and computer vision
A computer vision system processes images acquired from an electronic camera, which is
like the human vision system where the brain processes images derived from the eyes.
Computer vision is a rich and rewarding topic for study and research for electronic engineers,
computer scientists and many others. Increasingly, it has a commercial future. There are
now many vision systems in routine industrial use: cameras inspect mechanical parts to
check size, food is inspected for quality, and images used in astronomy benefit from
