Basic Relationships Between Pixels

Advanced Image Processing

Basic Relationships Between Pixels

  • Neighborhood
  • Adjacency
  • Paths
  • Connectivity
  • Regions
  • Boundaries

Neighbors of a pixel – N4(p)

  • Any pixel p(x, y) has two vertical and two horizontal neighbors, given by

(x+1, y),

(x-1, y),

(x, y+1),

(x, y-1)

  • This set of pixels are called the 4-neighbors of P, and is denoted by N4(P).
x , y+1
x-1 , y x,y x+1 , y
x , y-1

Neighbors of a pixel – ND(p)

  • Any pixel p(x, y) has four diagonal neighbors, given by

(x+1, y+1), (x+1, y-1), (x-1, y+1), (x-1 ,y-1)

  • This set is denoted by ND(p).
x-1 , y+1 x+1, y+1
x,y
x-1, y-1 x+1,y-1

Neighbors of a pixel – N8(p)

  • ND(p) and N4(p) are together known as 8-Neighbors and are denoted by N8(p)
  • ND(p) U N4(p) = N8(p)
  • What about when p(x,y) is a border pixel of the image ?
x-1,y+1 x,y+1 x+1,y+1
x-1,y x,y x+1,y
x-1,y-1 x,y-1 x+1, y-1

Adjacency

  • Let V be the set of intensity values used to define adjacency
  • For binary images à V = {1}
  • A particular grayscale image à V = {1,3,5,…,251,253,255}
  • 4-adjacency: Two pixels p and q with values from V are 4-adjacent if q is in the set N4(p).
  • 8-adjacency: Two pixels p and q with values from V are 8-adjacent if q is in the set N8(p).
  • m-adjacency: Two pixels p and q with values from V are m-adjacent if,

q is in N4(p)

OR

q is in ND(p) AND N4(p)N4(q) has no pixels whose values are from V

Path

  • set of pixels lying in some adjacency definition
  • 4-adjacency à 4-path
  • 8-adjacency à 8-path
  • m-adjacency à m-path
  • path length ?
  • Number of pixels involved

Connectivity

  • Let Sà subset of pixels in an image
  • Two pixels p and q are said to be connected in S if there exist a path between them consisting entirely of pixels in S.
  • For any pixel p in S the set of pixels that are connected to it in S is called connected component of S.
  • If S has only one connected component, then it is called connected set.

Region

  • A connected set is also called a Region.
  • Two regions (let Ri and Rj) are said to be adjacent if their union forms a connected set. Adjacent Regions or joint regions
  • Regions that are not adjacent are said to be disjoint regions.
  • 4- and 8-adjacency is considered when referring to regions (author)
  • Discussing a particular region, type of adjacency must be specified.
  • Fig2.25d the two regions are adjacent only if 8-adjacency is considered

Foreground and Background

  • Suppose an image contain K disjoint regions Rk , k=1,2,3,…K, none of which touches the image border
  • Let Ru denote the union of all the K regions.
  • Let (Ru)c denote its compliment.
  • We call all the points in Ru the foreground and all the points in (Ru)c the background

Boundary

  • The boundary (border or contour) of a region R is the set of points that are adjacent to the points in the complement of R.
  • Set of pixels in the region that have at least one background neighbor.
  • The boundary of the region R is the set of pixels in the region that have one or more neighbors that are not in R.
  • Inner Border: Border of Foreground
  • Outer Border: Border of Background
  • If R happens to be entire Image?
  • There is a difference between boundary and edge in Digital Image Paradigm. The author refers this discussion to chapter 10.

Distance Measures

  • Euclidean Distance: De(p, q) = [(x-s)2 + (y-t)2]1/2
  • City Block Distance: D4(p, q) = |x-s| + |y-t|
  • Chess Board Distance: D8(p, q) = max(|x-s|, |y-t|)

 

 

Sample Problem from exercise

Histogram Representation

  • Histograms plots how many times (frequency) each intensity value in image occurs
  • Image below (left) has 256 distinct gray levels (8 bits)
  • Histogram (right) shows frequency (how many times) each gray level occurs

  • E.g. K = 16, 10 pixels have intensity value = 2
  • Only statistical information
  • No indication of location of pixels

Rough guess about the histogram of these images ?

Histogram Representation

  • Different images can have same histogram
  • 3 images below have same histogram
  • Half of pixels are gray, half are white
  • Same histogram = Same statistics
  • Distribution of intensities could be different

Histogram Representation

  • Many cameras display real time histograms of scene
  • Helps taking pictures according to your requirement
  • Also easier to detect types of processing applied to image

?

  • Can we reconstruct image from histogram ?

Histogram

  • Histograms help detect image acquisition issues
  • Histogram representation of an image can be useful in following characteristics of an image.
  • Exposure: amount of light per unit area reaching the image sensor
  • Brightness: average intensity of all pixels in image
  • Contrast: difference of foreground and background (objects distinction)
  • Dynamic Range: Number of distinct pixels in image
  • Artifacts: Image alteration after it is being captured

Histogram Representation

Four basic image types: dark, light, low contrast, high contrast and their corresponding histograms.

Histogram Representation

Histogram Representation

Histogram Representation

Histogram Representation

Contrast

  • Good Contrast?
  • Widely spread intensity values
  • Large difference between min and max intensity values

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