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Interesting article in
the March, 2006
issue of Wired
magazine
Read it here
Digital Image Processing

Image Enhancement
(Spatial Filtering 1)

Course Website: http://www.comp.dit.ie/bmacnamee

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Contents
In this lecture we will look at spatial filtering
techniques:
– Neighbourhood operations
– What is spatial filtering?
– Smoothing operations
– What happens at the edges?
– Correlation and convolution
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Neighbourhood Operations
Neighbourhood operations simply operate
on a larger neighbourhood of pixels than
point operations Origin x

Neighbourhoods are
mostly a rectangle
around a central pixel
(x, y)
Any size rectangle Neighbourhood

and any shape filter

are possible
y Image f (x, y)
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Simple Neighbourhood Operations
Some simple neighbourhood operations
include:
– Min: Set the pixel value to the minimum in
the neighbourhood
– Max: Set the pixel value to the maximum in
the neighbourhood
– Median: The median value of a set of
numbers is the midpoint value in that set (e.g.
from the set [1, 7, 15, 18, 24] 15 is the
median). Sometimes the median works better
than the average
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Simple Neighbourhood Operations
19 Example

Original Image x Enhanced Image x

123 127 128 119 115 130

140 145 148 153 167 172

133 154 183 192 194 191

194 199 207 210 198 195

164 170 175 162 173 151

y y
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The Spatial Filtering Process
Origin x
a b c r s t
d
g
e
h
f
i
* u
x
v
y
w
z
Original Image Filter
Simple 3*3 Pixels
e 3*3 Filter
Neighbourhood
eprocessed = v*e +
r*a + s*b + t*c +
u*d + w*f +
y Image f (x, y) x*g + y*h + z*i

The above is repeated for every pixel in the

original image to generate the filtered image
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Spatial Filtering: Equation Form
a b
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

g ( x, y )    w( s, t ) f ( x  s, y  t )
s  at  b

Filtering can be given

in equation form as
shown above
Notations are based
on the image shown
to the left
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Smoothing Spatial Filters
One of the simplest spatial filtering
operations we can perform is a smoothing
operation
– Simply average all of the pixels in a
neighbourhood around a central value
– Especially useful
in removing noise
1
/ 9
1
/ 9
1
/9
from images Simple
1
/9 1
/9 1
/9 averaging
– Also useful for
highlighting gross filter
1
/9 1
/9 1
/9
detail
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Smoothing Spatial Filtering
Origin x
104 100 108 1
/9 1
/9 1
/9

* /9 /9 /9
1 1 1
99 106 98

95 90 85 1
/9 1
/9 1
/9
1
/9 100
104 1
/9 108
1
/9
Original Image Filter
Simple 3*3 /9 106
1
99 1
/9 198
/9
3*3 Smoothing Pixels
Neighbourhood /9 190
1
95 /9 185
/9 Filter
e = 1/9*106 +
1
/9*104 + 1/9*100 + 1/9*108 +
1
/9*99 + 1/9*98 +
y Image f (x, y) 1
/9*95 + 1/9*90 + 1/9*85
= 98.3333
The above is repeated for every pixel in the
original image to generate the smoothed image
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Image Smoothing Example
The image at the top left
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

is an original image of
size 500*500 pixels
The subsequent images
show the image after
filtering with an averaging
filter of increasing sizes
– 3, 5, 9, 15 and 35
Notice how detail begins
to disappear
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

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Image Smoothing Example
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

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Image Smoothing Example
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

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Image Smoothing Example
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

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Image Smoothing Example
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

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Image Smoothing Example
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

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Image Smoothing Example
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Weighted Smoothing Filters
More effective smoothing filters can be
generated by allowing different pixels in the
neighbourhood different weights in the
averaging function
– Pixels closer to the
1
/16 2
/16 /16
1

central pixel are more

important
2
/16 4
/16 /16
2

– Often referred to as a 1
/16 2
/16 /16
1
weighted averaging
Weighted
averaging filter
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Another Smoothing Example
By smoothing the original image we get rid
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

of lots of the finer detail which leaves only

the gross features for thresholding

Original Image Smoothed Image Thresholded Image

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Averaging Filter Vs. Median Filter
19 Example
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Original Image Image After Image After

With Noise Averaging Filter Median Filter

Filtering is often used to remove noise from

images
Sometimes a median filter works better than
an averaging filter
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

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Averaging Filter Vs. Median Filter
Example
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

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Averaging Filter Vs. Median Filter
Example
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

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Averaging Filter Vs. Median Filter
Example
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Simple Neighbourhood Operations
19 Example

x
123 127 128 119 115 130

140 145 148 153 167 172

133 154 183 192 194 191

194 199 207 210 198 195

164 170 175 162 173 151

y
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Strange Things Happen At The Edges!

At the edges of an image we are missing

pixels to form a neighbourhood
Origin x
e e

e e e
y Image f (x, y)
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Strange Things Happen At The Edges!
19 (cont…)
There are a few approaches to dealing with
missing edge pixels:
– Omit missing pixels
• Only works with some filters
• Can add extra code and slow down processing
– Pad the image
• Typically with either all white or all black pixels
– Replicate border pixels
– Truncate the image
– Allow pixels wrap around the image
• Can cause some strange image artefacts
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Simple Neighbourhood Operations
19 Example

x
123 127 128 119 115 130

140 145 148 153 167 172

133 154 183 192 194 191

194 199 207 210 198 195

164 170 175 162 173 151

y
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Strange Things Happen At The Edges!
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Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Filtered Image:
Zero Padding

Original Filtered Image:

Image Replicate Edge Pixels

Filtered Image:
Wrap Around Edge Pixels
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

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Strange Things Happen At The Edges!
(cont…)
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

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Strange Things Happen At The Edges!
(cont…)
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

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Strange Things Happen At The Edges!
(cont…)
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Correlation & Convolution
The filtering we have been talking about so
far is referred to as correlation with the filter
itself referred to as the correlation kernel
Convolution is a similar operation, with just
one subtle difference
a b c r s t eprocessed = v*e +
d
f
e
g h
e
* u
x
v
y
w
z
z*a + y*b + x*c +
w*d + u*e +
t*f + s*g + r*h
Original Image Filter
Pixels

For symmetric filters it makes no difference

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Summary
In this lecture we have looked at the idea of
spatial filtering and in particular:
– Neighbourhood operations
– The filtering process
– Smoothing filters
– Dealing with problems at image edges when
using filtering
– Correlation and convolution
Next time we will looking at sharpening
filters and more on filtering and image
enhancement