is only part of the solution for trans- forming raw data into a form suitable for subsequent computer processing. A method must also be specified for describing the data so that features of interest are highlighted. Description, also called feature selection, deals with extracting attributes that result in some quantitative information of interest or are basic for differentiating one class of objects from another.

Recognition is the process that assigns a label (e.g., “vehicle”) to an object based on its descriptors. As detailed before, we conclude our coverage of digital image processing with the development of methods for recognition of individual objects.

So far we have said nothing about the need for prior knowledge or about the interaction between the knowledge base and the processing modules in Fig2 above. Knowledge about a problem domain is coded into an image processing system in the form of a knowledge database. This knowledge may be as sim- ple as detailing regions of an image where the information of interest is known to be located, thus limiting the search that has to be conducted in seeking that information. The knowledge base also can be quite complex, such as an interrelated list of all major possible defects in a materials inspection problem or an image database containing high-resolution satellite images of a region in con- nection with change-detection applications. In addition to guiding the operation of each processing module, the knowledge base also controls the interaction between modules. This distinction is made in Fig2 above by the use of double-headed arrows between the processing modules and the knowledge base, as op- posed to single-headed arrows linking the processing modules.

Edge detection

Edge detection is a terminology in image processing and computer vision, particularly in the areas of feature detection and feature extraction, to refer to algorithms which aim at identifying points in a digital image at which the image brightness changes sharply or more

formally has discontinuities.Although point and line detection certainly are important in any discussion on segmentation,edge dectection is by far the most common approach for detecting meaningful discounties in gray level.

Although certain literature has considered the detection of ideal step edges, the edges obtained from natural images are usually not at all ideal step edges. Instead they are normally affected by one or several of the following effects:1.focal blur caused by a finite depth-of-field and finite point spread function; 2.penumbral blur caused by shadows created by light sources of non-zero radius; 3.shading at a smooth object edge; 4.local specularities or interreflections in the vicinity of object edges.

A typical edge might for instance be the border between a block of red color and a block of yellow. In contrast a line (as can be extracted by a ridge detector) can be a small number of pixels of a different color on an otherwise unchanging background. For a line, there may therefore usually be one edge on each side of the line. To illustrate why edge detection is not a trivial task, let us consider the problem of detecting edges in the following one-dimensional signal. Here, we may intuitively say that there should be an edge between the 4th and 5th pixels.

5 7 6 4 152 148 149 If the intensity difference were smaller between the 4th and the 5th pixels and if the intensity differences between the adjacent neighbouring pixels were higher, it would not be as easy to say that there should be an edge in the corresponding region. Moreover, one could argue that this case is one in which there are several edges.Hence, to firmly state a specific threshold on how large the intensity change between two neighbouring pixels must be for us to say that there should be an edge between these pixels is not always a simple problem. Indeed, this is one of the reasons why edge detection may be a non-trivial problem unless the objects in the scene are particularly simple and

the illumination conditions can be well controlled.

There are many methods for edge detection, but most of them can be grouped into two categories,search-based and zero-crossing based. The search-based methods detect edges by first computing a measure of edge strength, usually a first-order derivative expression such as the gradient magnitude, and then searching for local directional maxima of the gradient magnitude using a computed estimate of the local orientation of the edge, usually the gradient direction. The zero-crossing based methods search for zero crossings in a second-order derivative expression computed from the image in order to find edges, usually the zero-crossings of the Laplacian or the zero-crossings of a non-linear differential expression, as will be described in the section on differential edge detection following below. As a pre-processing step to edge detection, a smoothing stage, typically Gaussian smoothing, is almost always applied (see also noise reduction).

The edge detection methods that have been published mainly differ in the types of smoothing filters that are applied and the way the measures of edge strength are computed. As many edge detection methods rely on the computation of image gradients, they also differ in the types of filters used for computing gradient estimates in the x- and y-directions.

Once we have computed a measure of edge strength (typically the gradient magnitude), the next stage is to apply a threshold, to decide whether edges are present or not at an image point. The lower the threshold, the more edges will be detected, and the result will be increasingly susceptible to noise, and also to picking out irrelevant features from the image. Conversely a high threshold may miss subtle edges, or result in fragmented edges.

If the edge thresholding is applied to just the gradient magnitude image, the resulting edges will in general be thick and some type of edge thinning post-processing is necessary. For edges detected with non-maximum suppression however, the edge curves are thin by definition

and the edge pixels can be linked into edge polygon by an edge linking (edge tracking) procedure. On a discrete grid, the non-maximum suppression stage can be implemented by estimating the gradient direction using first-order derivatives, then rounding off the gradient direction to multiples of 45 degrees, and finally comparing the values of the gradient magnitude in the estimated gradient direction.

A commonly used approach to handle the problem of appropriate thresholds for thresholding is by using thresholding with hysteresis. This method uses multiple thresholds to find edges. We begin by using the upper threshold to find the start of an edge. Once we have a start point, we then trace the path of the edge through the image pixel by pixel, marking an edge whenever we are above the lower threshold. We stop marking our edge only when the value falls below our lower threshold. This approach makes the assumption that edges are likely to be in continuous curves, and allows us to follow a faint section of an edge we have previously seen, without meaning that every noisy pixel in the image is marked down as an edge. Still, however, we have the problem of choosing appropriate thresholding parameters, and suitable thresholding values may vary over the image.

Some edge-detection operators are instead based upon second-order derivatives of the intensity. This essentially captures the rate of change in the intensity gradient. Thus, in the ideal continuous case, detection of zero-crossings in the second derivative captures local maxima in the gradient.

We can come to a conclusion that,to be classified as a meaningful edge point,the transition in gray level associated with that point has to be significantly stronger than the background at that point.Since we are dealing with local computations,the method of choice to determine whether a value is “significant” or not id to use a threshold.Thus we define a point in an image as being as being an edge point if its two-dimensional first-order derivative is greater than a specified criterion of connectedness is by definition an edge.The