Image Properties and Simple Point

Operations
CS/BIOEN 4640: Image Processing Basics

January 17, 2012

Image Brightness
Definition
The brightness of a grayscale image is the average
over all pixel intensities.
So, the equation for brightness of an image I is
h

1 XX
B(I) =
I(u, v)
wh
v=1 u=1

Dynamic Range
Definition
The dynamic range of an image is the total number of
distinctive pixel values that occur in the image.
I

Dynamic range is limited by the number of bits per

pixel used to represent the image.

Also limited by the dynamic range of the sensor.

Image processing cannot add dynamic range

(without making it up).

Example: Dynamic Range

Very Low Dynamic

Range (6 values)

Low Dynamic
Range (64 values)

High Dynamic
Range

High Dynamic Range Imaging

I

If both dark and bright areas in a scene, a camera

cannot capture details in them both with a single
exposure.

Details in dark areas are captured by long

exposures, while details in bright areas are
captured by short exposures.

To overcome limited dynamic range, we can take

multiple exposures and use image processing to
combine them.

Image Contrast
Definition
The contrast of a grayscale image is the amount to
which different objects in the image can be visually
distinguished from one another.
I

Contrast is how well an image utilizes the range of

pixel intensities available.

It is independent of the brightness in an image.

Example: Image Contrast

Low Contrast

Original Contrast

High Contrast

Equation for Contrast?

Unlike brightness, contrast is harder to nail down
mathematically. Many definitions are of the form:
Contrast =

Change in Luminance
Average Luminance

For example, Michelsons Contrast:

CM (I) =

max(I) min(I)
max(I) + min(I)

Equation for Contrast?

These types of equations make sense for images

with roughly two luminances, i.e., uniform
foreground and background.

They do not work well with more complex scenes,

or scenes where max and min pixels occur in small
quantities.

Point Operations
Definition
A point operation on an image is an algorithm that
changes each pixel value according to some function:
I(u, v) 7 f (I(u, v)).
I

The function f depends only on the pixel value.

It is independent of the spatial location (u, v).

The domain of f must match the range of I , and the

range of f determines the output image type.

Point Operation Pseudocode

Input: an image I(u, v) defined on [1 . . . w] [1 . . . h]

Output: new image I 0 (u, v)
for v = 1 . . . h
for u = 1 . . . w
set I 0 (u, v) = f (I(u, v))

Example Point Operation Functions

I

Addition (changes brightness)

f (p) = p + k
I

Multiplication (stretches/shrinks image range)

f (p) = k p
I

Real-valued functions:

exp(x), log(x), (1/x), xk , etc.

Clamping

The following function will clamp pixel values to fall

within the interval [a, b].

a if p < a
f (p) = p if a p b

b if p > b

Intensity Windowing
Definition
Intensity windowing is a clamp operation followed by
linearly stretching the image intensities to fill the full
possible range.
If we want to window an image in [a, b], with max
intensity M :

0
f (p) = M

pa
ba

if p < a
if a p b
if p > b

Example: Intensity Windowing

Original Image

Windowed Image

Thresholding

Thresholding converts a grayscale image into a binary

image by making every pixel below some threshold equal
to 0 and every pixel above that threshold equal to 1.

(
0 if p a
f (p) =
1 if p > a

Example: Thresholding

Original Image

Thresholded Image