EE/CSE 455, a technical elective available to both electrical and computer engineering seniors and graduate students, discusses many current techniques for processing and manipulating digital images. The course involves both pedagogical written assignments and computer projects.
The beginning of the course gives an overview of digital image processing systems and digital image fundamentals. During this unit, important elements of human visual perception are reviewed; these ideas help motivate many of the computer-based techniques described in subsequent units. Also, the standard model for a digital image, in addition to the concepts of sampling and quantization, are described. Finally, basic topological concepts between digital image pixel are discussed.
The next unit considers image transform analysis, with a primary focus on Fourier-based techniques. The one-dimensional Fourier transform is reviewed, and then two-dimensional Fourier transform analysis is discussed. To bridge the gap from the continuous world to the digital world, the sampling theorem is introduced. Next, the Discrete Fourier Transform and its properties are described. Fourier-based filtering techniques, such as the ideal low-pass and Butterworth filters are then introduced. The Fast Fourier Transform is also discussed. Finally, the Discrete Cosine Transform, used later in JPEG and MPEG, is introduced.
The next unit discusses techniques for image enhancement and segmentation. These techniques include point-based techniques based on histogram analysis. They also involve linear and nonlinear mask-based methods for noise reduction and region sharpening. Further, techniques of mathematical morphology, which involve an application of set-theoretic concepts to image processing, are described. Finally, image segmentation methods, based on edge detection and thresholding, are described.
The final unit considers the concept of image compression. Techniques for image encoding and decoding are discussed. A brief model of the encoding-decoding process is described. Next, compression techniques, such as run-length encoding and Huffman coding, are described. Finally, the multimedia image-compression methodologies, JPEG and MPEG, are discussed.