In this course you will learn Digital Image Processing. Digital image processing is the use of a digital computer to process digital images using well developed techniques. Digital Image processing allows a much wider range of algorithms to be applied to the image. The problems such as the build-up of noise and distortion during processing can be closely monitored and kept under control which had long plagued analog image processing.

Digital Image processing is subfield of digital signal processing. The development of this field of digital image processing is mainly affected by three factors:

1- The development of computers

2- The development of mathematics and especially the refinement in the field of discrete mathematics theory.

3- The demand for a wide range of applications in industry, military, aerospace, environment, agriculture, and medical science has dramatically increased.

In 1960s most of the techniques of digital image processing then called digital picture processing were developed, at Bell Laboratories, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Maryland, and a few other research facilities. Mostly the application was to satellite imagery, wire-photo standards conversion, medical imaging, videophone, character recognition, and photograph enhancement. So much for the history lets focus on this course.

In this course initially the fundamental concepts are taught including the origin of digital image processing, image sensing and acquisition, sampling and quantization, intensity resolution and spatial resolution.

Gradually this course leads to more in-depth topics such as intensity transformation and spatial filtering, segmentation, color image processing.