COLLEGE OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS

DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT

COURSE TITLE: GIS AND REMOTE SENSING

ASSIGNMENT TITLE: DIGITAL IMAGE PROCESSING

SUBMITTED TO: MR. ALI (ASST. PROFESSOR)

PREPARED BY: AYELE SETIE DAMITE

ID NO: DBU1700050

DECEMBER, 2024

DEBREBIRHAN, ETHIOPIA

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 1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. DIGITAL IMAGE PROCESSING

An image is a picture, photograph or any form of a two‐ dimensional (2D) representation of

objects or a scene. The information in an image is presented in tones or colors. A digital image is
a two‐dimensional array of numbers. Each cell of a digital image is called a pixel, and the
number representing the brightness of the pixel is called a digital number (DN) (Fig. 1.1). As a
2D array, a digital image is composed of data in lines and columns. The position of a pixel is
allocated with the line and column of its DN. Such regularly arranged data, without x and y
coordinates, are usually called raster data. As digital images are nothing more than data arrays,
mathematical operations can be readily performed on the digital numbers of images.
Mathematical operations on digital images are called digital image processing.

In today’s digital life, digital images are everywhere around us. An image is a visual
representation of an object, a person, or a scene. A digital image is a two-dimensional function f
(x, y) that is a projection of a 3-dimesional scene into a 2-dimensional projection plane, where x,
y represents the location of the picture element or pixel and contains the intensity value. When
values of x, y and intensity are discrete, then the image is said to be a digital image.

A digital image can be stored as a file in a computer data store on a variety of media, such as a
hard disk, memory stick, CD, etc. It can be displayed in black and white or in color on a
computer monitor as well as in hard copy output such as film or print. It may also be output as a
simple array of numbers for numerical analysis. the process of receiving and analyzing visual
information by digital computer is called digital image processing.

Figure 1.1The 2-D Cartesian coordinate space of an M x N digital image

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1.2. History of Digital Image Processing

The history of digital image processing is a fascinating journey that has evolved alongside
advancements in technology and computing capabilities. Digital image processing can trace its
roots back to the 1920s and 1930s when the first attempts were made to digitize images for
transmission and storage. However, it was during the 1950s and 1960s that significant progress
was made with the development of digital computers, which allowed for more sophisticated
image processing techniques.

In the early days, digital image processing was primarily used in military and aerospace
applications for tasks such as reconnaissance and intelligence gathering. As computing power
increased and imaging technologies improved, the field expanded into various other domains.

The 1970s and 1980s saw the emergence of key algorithms and techniques that laid the
foundation for modern digital image processing. Important milestones during this period
included the development of image enhancement techniques, image compression algorithms, and
the introduction of image segmentation and pattern recognition methods.

With the rise of personal computers in the 1990s, digital image processing became more
accessible to a wider audience. This accessibility led to its integration into various consumer
products and applications, such as digital cameras, image editing software, and medical imaging
equipment.

In recent years, the field of digital image processing has seen rapid growth and innovation driven
by advances in artificial intelligence, deep learning, and computer vision. These technologies
have revolutionized how images are processed, analyzed, and understood, leading to
breakthroughs in areas such as facial recognition, autonomous vehicles, and medical diagnostics.

Today, digital image processing continues to evolve at a rapid pace, with researchers and
practitioners exploring new frontiers in areas like image understanding, 3D imaging, and real-
time processing. As we look to the future, it is clear that digital image processing will play an
increasingly vital role in shaping how we interact with visual information in our digital world.

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Figure 1. 2. Digital image processing

1.3. Digital Image Formation

Digital image formation involves the process of creating a digital representation of an image
from the real world.

Steps involved in digital image formation are the ff:

1. Image Acquisition: In this step, an image is captured using devices such as digital
cameras or scanners. The real-world scene is sampled and converted into a digital format
consisting of pixels (picture elements).
2. Sampling: The continuous real-world image is discretized into a grid of pixels during the
sampling process. The resolution of the image is determined by the number of pixels
captured.
3. Quantization: Each sampled pixel's intensity values are quantized to represent discrete
levels of brightness. This process converts the continuous range of intensity values into a
finite set of levels, usually represented in binary form.
4. Preprocessing: Preprocessing steps such as noise reduction, color correction, and
resizing may be applied to the acquired image to enhance its quality and prepare it for
further processing.
5. Compression: Compression techniques are often employed to reduce the size of the
digital image file for efficient storage and transmission. Common compression methods
include lossless (e.g., PNG) and lossy (e.g., JPEG) compression.

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 6. Storage: The processed digital image is stored in a file format such as JPEG, PNG, or
TIFF on a computer or other storage devices.
7. Display: The digital image can be displayed on various output devices such as computer
monitors, mobile screens, or printed on paper.
1.4. Typical Image Processing Operations

Image processing involves a number of techniques and algorithms. The most representative
image processing operations are:

A). Binarization: Many image processing tasks can be performed by converting a color image
or a grayscale image into binary in order to simplify and speed up processing. Conversion of a
color or grayscale image to a binary image having only two levels of gray (black and white) is
known as binarization.
B). Smoothing: A technique that is used to blur or smoothen the details of objects in an image.
(C). Sharpening: Image processing techniques, by which the edges and fine details of objects in
an image are enhanced for human viewing, are known as sharpening techniques.

(a) The original image (b) After removing noise

Figure 1.3: Removing noise from an image

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 (D). Noise Removal and De-blurring: Before processing, the amount of noise in images is
reduced using noise removal filters. Image removal technique can sometimes be used,
depending on the type of noise or blur in the image.

(a) The original image (b) After removing the blur

figure 1.4: image deblurring

(E). Edge Extraction: To find various objects before analyzing image contents, edge
extraction is performed.

(a) The original image (b) Its edge image

Figure 1.5: Finding edges in an image

(F). Segmentation: The process of dividing an image into various parts is known as
segmentation.

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1.5 Digital Image File Types or formats

There are a number of digital image file types available these days. The most commonly used
image file types are: JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PNG and BMP.

Acronym Name Properties

GIF Graphics interchange format Limited to only 256 colors (8 bit); lossless
compression
Often used for short animations, and simple
graphics.
JPEG Joint Photographic Experts Widely used format for photographs and images
Group with complex colors.
Uses lossy compression to reduce file size.
Suitable for web use and sharing due to its smaller
file sizes.
BMP Bit map picture Basic image format; limited (generally) lossless
compression; lossy variants exist
Stores images pixel by pixel without compression.
Commonly used in Windows environments.
PNG Portable network graphics New lossless compression format; designed to
replace GIF
TIF/TIFF Tagged image (file) format Highly flexible, detailed and adaptable format;
compressed/uncompressed variants exist
Commonly used in professional photography and
printing industries.
Suitable for images that require high-quality
printing and editing.

Table 1.1 Common image formats and their associated properties

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Figure 1.6.; Examples of different image types and their associated storage formats

2.1. Image data types

1. Binary images:
 Represents images in black and white, where each pixel is either black (0) or
white (1).
 Often used in image processing tasks like edge detection and shape analysis.
2. Grayscale Image:
 Represents images using shades of gray.
 Each pixel is typically represented by 8 bits, allowing for 256 different shades of
gray from 0 (black) to 255 (white).
3. RGB or true-color images:
 are 3-D arrays that assign three numerical values to each pixel, each value
corresponding to the red, green and blue (RGB) image color channel component
respectively.
 Commonly used in digital photography and computer graphics.

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 4. Floating-point images:
 are commonly stored in the TIFF image format or a more specialized, domain-
specific format (e.g. medical DICOM).
 Although the use of floating-point images is increasing through the use of high
dynamic range and stereo photography, file formats supporting their storage
currently remain limited.
2.2. Components of an Image Processing System

An image processing system consists of various components that work together to manipulate
and analyze digital images. Here are the key components of an image processing system:

1. Image Acquisition:
 The process of capturing digital images using devices such as cameras, scanners, or
sensors.
 Conversion of analog signals (light) into digital images.
2. Image Preprocessing:
 Includes various operations to enhance and prepare images for further processing.
 Operations may include noise reduction, image restoration, color correction, and image
resizing.
3. Image Segmentation:
 Dividing an image into meaningful parts or regions.
 Used to separate objects from the background for further analysis.
 This involves subdividing an image into constituent parts, or isolating certain aspects of
an image:
 Finding lines, circles, or particular shapes in an image
 In an aerial photograph, identifying cars, trees, buildings, or roads
4. Feature Extraction:
 Identifying and extracting important features from images.
 Features can include edges, textures, colors, shapes, or patterns.

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5. Image Enhancement:
 Improving the visual quality of images for better interpretation.
 Techniques include contrast enhancement, brightness adjustment, and sharpening.
 Sharpening or deblurring an out of focus image
 Highlighting edges and Removing noise

Fig 1.7. Image Enhancement

6. Image Compression:
 Reducing the size of digital images to save storage space and transmission bandwidth.
 Lossy and lossless compression techniques are used to minimize data redundancy.
 This may be considered as reversing the damage done to an image
by a known cause, for example: Removing of blur caused by linear motion, Removal of
optical distortions and removing periodic interference.
7. Image Restoration:

Recovering or improving the quality of degraded images.

Techniques include removing noise, blurring, or other distortions.

8. Image Analysis:

Involves extracting meaningful information from images for decision-making.

Tasks include object detection, recognition, classification, and measurement.

9. Pattern Recognition:

Identifying patterns or structures in images using algorithms and machine learning techniques.

Used for tasks like face recognition, handwriting recognition, and object tracking.

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10. Image Understanding:

Interpreting the content of images based on context and domain-specific knowledge.

Involves higher-level analysis to extract semantic information from images.

11. Image Reconstruction:

Generating high-quality images from incomplete or degraded image data.

Used in medical imaging, satellite imaging, and video processing.

12. Image Display and Visualization:

Presenting processed images for human interpretation.

Visualization tools help users view and analyze images effectively.

These components collectively form an image processing system that performs a wide range of
tasks to manipulate, analyze, and interpret digital images for various applications in fields like
medicine, surveillance, remote sensing, and multimedia.

2.3. Digital Images Types

1. Binary Images

Binary images are the simplest type of images and can take on two values, typically black and
white, or ‘0’ and ‘1’. A binary image is referred to as a 1 bit/pixel image because it takes only 1
binary digit to represent each pixel.

We define the characteristic function of an object in an image to be

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Fig 1.8 Binary Images

• Each pixel is stored as a single bit (0 or 1)

3. Grayscale image

Gray _scale images are referred to as monochrome, or one-color image. They contain brightness
information only brightness information only, no color information. The number of different
brightness level available. The typical image contains 8 bit/ pixel (data, which allows us to have
(0-255) different brightness (gray) levels.

• Each pixel is usually stored as a byte (value between 0 to 255)

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4. True color, or RGB.

Here each pixel has a particular color; that color being described by the amount of red, green,
and blue in it.

If each of these components has a range 0–255, this gives a total of 2553 = 16,777,216 different
possible colors in the image. This is enough colors for any image. Since the total number of bits
required for each pixel is 24, such images are also called 24-bit color images.

Fig. 1.9. 24-Bit Colors Image

• Each pixel is represented by three bytes (e.g., RGB)

• Supports 256 x 256 x 256 possible combined colors (16,777,216)

• A 640 x 480 24-bit color image would require 921.6 KB of storage

4.Indexed.
It is convenient if an image has 256 colors or less, for then the index values will only require one
byte each to store. Some image file formats (for example, CompuServe GIF) allow only 256
colors or fewer in each image, for precisely this reason.

Example of 8-Bit Color Image

• One byte for each pixel

• Supports 256 out of the millions s possible, acceptable color quality

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 • Requires Color Look-Up Tables (LUTs)

• A 640 x 480 8-bit color image requires 307.2 KB of storage (the same as 8-bit
grayscale)

Figure 2.5 shows an indexed color image and a 4 × 4 detailed region, where each pixel shows the
index and the values of R, G, and B at the color palette entry that the index points to.

Figure 1.10: an indexed color image

2.4. Applications of Digital Image Processing

 Image enhancement/restoration
 Medical visualization- Inspection and interpretation of images obtained from x-ray
 Industrial inspection, Automatic inspection of items on a production line and Inspection
of paper samples
 Law enforcement- Fingerprint analysis
 Remote sensing via satellites and other spacecrafts
 Image transmission and storage for business applications
 Radar, SONAR, Acoustic image processing
 Agriculture, Satellite/aerial views of land, for example to determine how much land is
being used for different purposes, or to investigate the suitability of different regions for
different crops

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 summary

Digital image processing is a versatile field that focuses on the manipulation and analysis of
digital images using a variety of algorithms and techniques. At its core, digital images are
represented as matrices of pixels, each with a value corresponding to its intensity or color.
Spatial domain processing involves directly manipulating these pixel values, enabling techniques
like filtering for noise reduction or sharpening, geometric transformations, and image
enhancement. In contrast, frequency domain processing utilizes transforms like the Fourier
transform to operate on the image's frequency components, enabling applications such as
compression and restoration.

Key concepts in digital image processing include image segmentation, which partitions an
image into meaningful regions, and feature extraction, which identifies and quantifies relevant
characteristics like edges, shapes, and textures. These capabilities underpin many important
applications, from medical imaging and remote sensing to computer vision, security, and
entertainment. Underpinning the field are a wealth of sophisticated algorithms, including
convolution, transforms, statistical models, and increasingly, deep learning techniques.

Overall, digital image processing is a dynamic and multifaceted discipline, continually

evolving to tackle new challenges and unlock the potential of visual data across an ever-
expanding range of domains. Its core principles of representing, enhancing, and extracting
insights from digital images remain fundamental to unlocking the power of visual information in
the modern world.

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