Digital image processing

Article By:

Umbaugh, Scott E Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Edwardsville, Illinois.

Last reviewed:May 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1036/1097-8542.337600

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• Image processing, published August 2020:Download PDF Get Adobe Acrobat Reader

The computer manipulation of visual data to solve a problem. The problems under consideration are of two primary types: (1) those that require a computer to act on the resultant images, and (2) those that provide images for human interpretation. The first category is referred to as computer vision applications, and the second type as human vision-based applications. Examples of computer vision applications are finding specific elements in an image, such as a person’s hand (Fig. 1), detecting object defects on a production line, enabling a robot to explore the surface of Mars, or analyzing images to aid in a medical diagnosis. Human vision-based applications include improving images to make them look better and reducing image size to allow for greater storage space or faster data transmission.

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