image processing

Set of computational techniques for analyzing, enhancing, compressing, and reconstructing images. Its main components are importing, in which an image is captured through scanning or digital photography; analysis and manipulation of the image, accomplished using various specialized software applications; and output (e.g., to a printer or monitor). Image processing has extensive applications in many areas, including astronomy, medicine, industrial robotics, and remote sensing by satellites. See also pattern recognition.

image processing

(1) The analysis of a picture using techniques that can identify shades, colors and relationships that cannot be perceived by the human eye. Image processing is used to solve identification problems, such as in forensic medicine or in creating weather maps from satellite pictures. It deals with images in bitmapped graphics format that have been scanned in or captured with digital cameras.

(2) Any image improvement, such as refining a picture in a paint program that has been scanned or entered from a video source.

(3) Same as imaging.

image processing [′im·ij ‚prä·ses·iŋ]

(computer science)

A technique in which the data from an image are digitized and various mathematical operations are applied to the data, generally with a digital computer, in order to create an enhanced image that is more useful or pleasing to a human observer, or to perform some of the interpretation and recognition tasks usually performed by humans. Also known as picture processing.

(graphics)

image processing - Computer manipulation of images. Some of the many algorithms used in image processing include convolution (on which many others are based), FFT, DCT, thinning (or skeletonisation), edge detection and contrast enhancement. These are usually implemented in software but may also use special purpose hardware for speed.

Image processing contrasts with computer graphics, which is usually more concerned with the generation of artificial images, and visualisation, which attempts to understand (real-world) data by displaying it as an artificial image (e.g. a graph). Image processing is used in image recognition and computer vision.

Silicon Graphics manufacture workstations which are often used for image processing. There are a few programming languages designed for image processing, e.g. CELIP, VPL.

See also Pilot European Image Processing Archive.

Usenet newsgroup: news:sci.image.processing.