Digital Image Processing

Lecture notes
Digital Image Processing by Jorma Kekalainen
Digital Image Processing

Jorma Kekalainen

Spatial Filtering
Lecture weeks 13 and 14
Page 1
Lecture notes
Introduction
We have seen previously that an image can be
modified by applying a particular function to
each pixel value.
Spatial filtering may be considered as an
extension of these point operations, where we
apply a function to a neighborhood of each
pixel.
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Using a spatial mask on an image

The idea is to move a mask - a rectangle (usually with sides of
odd length) or other shape over the given image.
As we do this, we create a new image whose pixels have gray
values calculated from the gray values under the mask, as
shown below.
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Page 2
Lecture notes
Filter
The combination of mask and function is called a
filter.
If the function by which the new gray value is
calculated is a linear function of all the gray
values in the mask, then the filter is called a
linear filter.
We can implement a linear filter by multiplying
all elements in the mask by corresponding
elements in the neighborhood, and adding up all
these products.
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Spatial filter
Suppose that the 3*5 mask
values are given by:
and that corresponding

pixel values are
We now multiply and add:
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Page 3
Lecture notes
Spatial filtering
Spatial filtering requires three steps:
1. position the mask over the current pixel,
2. form all products of filter elements with the
corresponding elements of the neighborhood,
3. add up all the products.
This process must be repeated for every pixel
in the image.
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Spatial filtering schema
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Page 4
Lecture notes
Example
An example: One important linear filter is to use a (3*3) mask
and take the average of all nine values within the mask.
This value becomes the gray value of the corresponding pixel
in the new image.
We may describe this operation as follows:
where e is gray value of the current pixel in the original image,

and the average is the gray value of the corresponding pixel in
the new image.
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Example
To apply this to an image, consider the 5*5 image obtained by:
x=uint8(10*magic(5))
x=
170
240
10
80
150
230
50
70
140
160
40
60
130
200
220
100
120
190
210
30
110
180
250
20
90
We may regard this array as being made of nine overlapping 3*3
neighborhoods.
The output of our working will thus consist only of nine values.
Jorma Kekalainen
Note:
We shall see later how to obtain
25 values in the output.
706
Page 5
Lecture notes
Example
Consider the top left 3*3 neighborhood of our image x:
170 240 10
80
150
230 50
70
140 160
40
60
130 200 220
100 120 190 210 30
110 180 250 20
90
Now we take the average of all these values:
mean2(x(1:3,1:3))
ans =
111.1111
which we can round to 111.
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Note:
mean2(A) computes the
average or mean of matrix elements.
Example
Now we can move to the second neighborhood:
170 240 10
80
150
230 50
70
140 160
40
60
130 200 220
100 120 190 210 30
110 180 250 20
90
and take its average:
mean2(x(1:3,2:4))
ans =
108.8889
We can round this either down to 108, or to the nearest
integer 109.
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Page 6
Lecture notes
Example
If we continue in this manner, we will build up
the following output:
111.1111
108.8889 128.8889
110.0000
130.0000 150.0000
131.1111
151.1111 148.8889
This array is the result of filtering x with the
3*3 averaging filter.
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Matrix notation
It is convenient to describe a linear filter simply in terms of
the coefficients of all the gray values of pixels within the
mask.
This can be written as a matrix.
The averaging filter above, for example, could have its output
written as
and so we can describe this filter by the matrix
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Page 7
Lecture notes
Example
The filter
would operate on gray values as
a-2b+c-2d+4e-2f+g-2h+i
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Edges of the image

There is an obvious problem in applying a filter at the
edge of the image, where the mask partly falls
outside the image.
In such a case, as illustrated below there will be a
lack of gray values to use in the filter function.
A mask at the edge of an image
Note: There is no single best approach; the method must be dictated by

the problem at hand; by the filter being used, and by the result
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required.
Page 8
Lecture notes
Dealing with edge problem

Ignore the edges
That is, we only apply the mask to those pixels in
the image for with the mask will lie fully within
the image.
This means all pixels except for the edges, and
results in an output image which is smaller than
the original.
If the mask is very large, we may lose a significant
amount of information by this method.
We applied this method in our previous example.
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Dealing with edge problem

Padding with zeros
We assume that all necessary values outside
the image are zero.
This gives us all values to work with, and will
return an output image of the same size as the
original, but may have the effect of
introducing unwanted artifacts (for example,
edges) around the image.
Note: There is no single best approach dealing with the edge problem; the method
must be dictated by the problem at hand; by the filter being used, and by the result
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required.
Page 9
Lecture notes
Filtering in Matlab
The filter2 function does the job of linear filtering for
us.
Its use is
filter2(filter,image,shape)
and the result is a matrix of data type double.
The parameter shape is optional, it describes the
method for dealing with the edges:
filter2(filter,image,'same') is the default; it produces a
matrix of equal size to the original image matrix.
It uses zero padding.
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Example: filter2(a,x,'same')
a=ones(3,3)/9
a=
0.1111 0.1111 0.1111
0.1111 0.1111 0.1111
0.1111 0.1111 0.1111
>> filter2(a,x,'same')
ans =
76.6667 85.5556 65.5556
87.7778 111.1111 108.8889
66.6667 110.0000 130.0000
67.7778 131.1111 151.1111
56.6667 105.5556 107.7778
Jorma Kekalainen
67.7778
128.8889
150.0000
148.8889
87.7778
58.8889
105.5556
106.6667
85.5556
38.8889
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Page 10
Lecture notes
Example: filter2(a,x,'same')
x=uint8(10*magic(5))
x=
170
230
40
100
110
a=ones(3,3)/9
240 10 80 150
50 70 140 160
60 130 200 220
120 190 210 30
180 250 20 90
a=
0.1111 0.1111 0.1111
0.1111 0.1111 0.1111
0.1111 0.1111 0.1111
filter2(a,x,'same')
ans =
76.6667
87.7778
66.6667
67.7778
56.6667
85.5556
111.1111
110.0000
131.1111
105.5556
uint8(filter2(a,x,'same'))
65.5556 67.7778 58.8889
108.8889 128.8889 105.5556
130.0000 150.0000 106.6667
151.1111 148.8889 85.5556
107.7778 87.7778 38.8889
Jorma Kekalainen
ans =
77 86
88 111
67 110
68 131
57 106
66 68 59
109 129 106
130 150 107
151 149 86
108 88 39
717
filter2(filter,image,'valid')
filter2(filter,image,'valid') applies the mask
only to inside pixels.
We can see that the result will always be
smaller than the original:
filter2(a,x,'valid')
uint8( filter2(a,x,'valid'))
ans =
111.1111 108.8889 128.8889
110.0000 130.0000 150.0000
131.1111 151.1111 148.8889
ans =
111 109 129
110 130 150
131 151 149
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Page 11
Lecture notes
Note
We can obtain the previous result of 'same' by padding with
zeros and using 'valid':
x2=zeros(7,7); x2(2:6,2:6)=x
x2 =
filter2(a,x2,'valid')
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filter2(filter,image,'full')
filter2(filter,image,'full') returns a
result larger than the original; it
does this by padding with zero, and
applying the filter at all places on
and around the image where the
mask intersects the image matrix.
filter2(a,x,'full')
ans =
18.8889
44.4444
48.8889
41.1111
27.7778
23.3333
12.2222
45.5556
76.6667
87.7778
66.6667
67.7778
56.6667
32.2222
46.6667
85.5556
111.1111
110.0000
131.1111
105.5556
60.0000
uint8(filter2(a,x,'full'))
ans =
19 46
44 77
49 88
41 67
28 68
23 57
12 32
47
86
111
110
131
106
60
37 27 26 17
66 68 59 34
109 129 106 59
130 150 107 46
151 149 86 38
108 88 39 13
50 40 12 10
36.6667 26.6667 25.5556 16.6667

65.5556 67.7778 58.8889 34.4444
108.8889 128.8889 105.5556 58.8889
130.0000 150.0000 106.6667 45.5556
151.1111 148.8889 85.5556 37.7778
107.7778 87.7778 38.8889 13.3333
50.0000 40.0000 12.2222 10.0000
filter2(a,x,'same')
Note: The shape parameter, being optional, can be omitted; in which case the default
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valueJorma
is 'same'.
Page 12
Lecture notes
Compare
filter2(a,x,'same')
ans =
76.6667
87.7778
66.6667
67.7778
56.6667
85.5556
111.1111
110.0000
131.1111
105.5556
65.5556 67.7778 58.8889

108.8889 128.8889 105.5556
130.0000 150.0000 106.6667
151.1111 148.8889 85.5556
107.7778 87.7778 38.8889
ans =
111.1111 108.8889 128.8889
110.0000 130.0000 150.0000
131.1111 151.1111 148.8889
conv2(double(x),a,'same')
ans =
76.6667 85.5556
87.7778 111.1111
66.6667 110.0000
67.7778 131.1111
Jorma Kekalainen
56.6667 105.5556
65.5556 67.7778 58.8889

108.8889 128.8889 105.5556
130.0000 150.0000 106.6667
151.1111 148.8889 85.5556
107.7778 87.7778 38.8889
conv2(double(x),a,'valid')
ans =
111.1111 108.8889 128.8889
110.0000 130.0000 150.0000
721
131.1111 151.1111 148.8889
Compare
conv2(double(x),a,'full')
ans =
18.8889
44.4444
48.8889
41.1111
27.7778
23.3333
12.2222
45.5556
76.6667
87.7778
66.6667
67.7778
56.6667
32.2222
46.6667
85.5556
111.1111
110.0000
131.1111
105.5556
60.0000
or conv2(double(x),a)
36.6667 26.6667 25.5556 16.6667
65.5556 67.7778 58.8889 34.4444
108.8889 128.8889 105.5556 58.8889
130.0000 150.0000 106.6667 45.5556
151.1111 148.8889 85.5556 37.7778
107.7778 87.7778 38.8889 13.3333
50.0000 40.0000 12.2222 10.0000
filter2(a,x,'full')
ans =
18.8889 45.5556
44.4444 76.6667
48.8889 87.7778
41.1111 66.6667
27.7778 67.7778
23.3333 56.6667
Jorma Kekalainen
12.2222 32.2222
46.6667
85.5556
111.1111
110.0000
131.1111
105.5556
60.0000
36.6667 26.6667 25.5556 16.6667

65.5556 67.7778 58.8889 34.4444
108.8889 128.8889 105.5556 58.8889
130.0000 150.0000 106.6667 45.5556
151.1111 148.8889 85.5556 37.7778
107.7778 87.7778 38.8889 13.3333
50.0000
40.0000 12.2222 10.0000
filter2(a,x,'same')
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Page 13
Lecture notes
Note
C = conv2(A,B) computes the two-dimensional convolution of
matrices A and B.
If one of these matrices describes a two-dimensional finite impulse
response (FIR) filter, the other matrix is filtered in two dimensions.
The size of C is determined as follows: if [ma,na] = size(A), [mb,nb]
= size(B), and [mc,nc] = size(C), then mc = max([ma+mb-1,ma,mb])
and nc = max([na+nb-1,na,nb]).
C = conv2(...,shape) returns a subsection of the two-dimensional
convolution, as specified by the shape parameter:
'full' Returns the full two-dimensional convolution (default).
'same' Returns the central part of the convolution of the same size
as A.
'valid' Returns only those parts of the convolution that are
computed without the zero-padded edges. Using this option, size(C)
= max([ma-max(0,mb-1),na-max (0,nb-1)],0).
Jorma Kekalainen
Image Processing
Note:
All numeric inputs to conv2Digital
must
be of type double or single.
723
Two-dimensional convolution
If a and b are functions of two discrete variables, n1 and n2,
then the formula for the two-dimensional convolution of a
and b is
In practice, of course, conv2 computes the convolution for

finite intervals.
Note that matrix indices in Matlab software always start at
1 rather than 0.
Therefore, matrix elements A(1,1), B(1,1), and C(1,1)
correspond to mathematical quantities a(0,0), b(0,0), and
c(0,0).
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Page 14
Lecture notes
fspecial function
We can create our filters by hand, or by using the fspecial
function; this has many options which makes for easy creation
of many different filters.
We shall use the average option, which produces averaging
filters of given size; thus fspecial('average',[5,7]) will return
an averaging filter of size 5*7 or more simply
fspecial('average',11) will return an averaging filter of size
11*11.
If we leave out the final number or vector, the 3*3 averaging
filter is returned.
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Example
For example, suppose we apply the 3*3 averaging filter to an
image as follows:
c=imread('cameraman.tif');
f1=fspecial('average');
cf1=filter2(f1,c);
We now have a matrix of data type double.
To display this, we can do any of the following:
transform it to a matrix of type uint8, for use with imshow,
divide its values by 255 to obtain a matrix with values in
the 0.1 1.0 range, for use with imshow,
use mat2gray to scale the result for display (later more on
this function).
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Page 15
Lecture notes
Example
Using the second method i.e. functions

figure,imshow(c),figure,imshow(cf1/255)
will produce the images shown below.
f1=fspecial('average');
or
cf1=filter2(f1,c);
figure,imshow(c),figure,imshow(cf1/255)
imshow(uint8(cf1))
Average filtering (3*3)
Original image
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Example
f1=fspecial('average',[5,5]);
cf1=filter2(f1,c);
figure,imshow(cf1/255)
cf1=filter2(f1,c);
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Page 16
Lecture notes
Example
cf1=filter2(f1,c);
cf1=filter2(f1,c);
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Example
cf1=filter2(f1,c);
cf1=filter2(f1,c);
The averaging filter blurs the image; the
edges in particular are less distinct than in
the original.
The image can be further blurred by using
an averaging filter of larger size.
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Page 17
Lecture notes
Comment on average filtering
Notice how the zero padding used at the edges has resulted in a dark
border appearing around the image.
This is especially noticeable when a large filter is being used.
If this is an unwanted artifact of the filtering; if for example it changes the
average brightness of the image, then it may be more appropriate to use
the 'valid' shape option.
The resulting image after these filters may appear to be much worse than
the original.
However, applying a blurring filter to reduce details in an image may the
perfect operation for autonomous machine recognition, or if we are only
concentrating on such aspects of the image as numbers of objects or
amount of dark and light areas.
In those cases, too much details may obscure the outcome.
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Frequency concept
Fundamentally, the frequencies of an image are the
amount by which gray values change with distance.
High frequency components are characterized by large
changes in gray values over small distances;
Example of high frequency components are edges and
noise.
Low frequency components, on the other hand, are
parts of the image characterized by little change in the
gray values.
These may include backgrounds and skin textures.
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Page 18
Lecture notes
Low and high pass filters

A high pass filter passes over the high frequency components,
and reduces or eliminates low frequency components.
A low pass filter passes over the low frequency components,
and reduces or eliminates high frequency components.
E.g. the 3*3 averaging filter is low pass filter, as it tends to blur
edges.
The filter
Jorma Kekalainen
is a high pass filter.
733
High pass filter

We note that the sum of the coefficients (i.e., the
sum of all elements in the matrix), in the high
pass filter is zero.
This means that in a low frequency part of an
image, where the gray values are similar, the
result of using this filter is that the corresponding
gray values in the new image will be close to zero.
High pass filters are of particular value in edge
detection and edge enhancement.
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Page 19
Lecture notes
Example: High pass filtering

f=fspecial('laplacian')
f=
0.1667 0.6667 0.1667
0.6667 -3.3333 0.6667
0.1667 0.6667 0.1667

cf=filter2(f,c);
mshow(cf/100)
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Example: High pass filtering

Application of the Laplacian of Gaussian (log) filter.
f1=fspecial('log')
f1 =
0.0448
0.0468
0.0564
0.0468
0.0448
0.0468
0.3167
0.7146
0.3167
0.0468
0.0564
0.7146
-4.9048
0.7146
0.0564
0.0468
0.3167
0.7146
0.3167
0.0468
0.0448
0.0468
0.0564
0.0468
0.0448
cf1=filter2(f1,c);
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Page 20
Lecture notes
Example
Lets consider block of similar values pixels,
and apply the previous high pass filter
to the central four:
The resulting values are

close to zero, which is the
expected result of applying a
high pass filter to a low
frequency component.
Jorma
Kekalainen
Digital Image
Processing
737
Note:
How
to deal with negative outside
of the
displayable range we shall see next.
Exercise
Verify the calculation in the previous example:
apply the high pass filter
to the central four elements
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Page 21
Lecture notes
Solution
filter2(filter,image,'valid') applies the mask
only to inside pixels.
>> A=[150 152 148 149;147 152 151 150;152 148 149 151;151 149 150 148]
A=
150 152 148 149
147 152 151 150
152 148 149 151
151 149 150 148
>> f2=[1 -2 1;-2 4 -2;1 -2 1]
f2 =
1 -2 1
-2 4 -2
1 -2 1
>> cf2=filter2(f2,A, 'valid')
cf2 =
11 6
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-13 -5
739
Values outside the displayable

range
For image display we would like the gray
values of the pixels to lie between 0 and 255.
However, the result of applying a linear filter
may create values which lie outside this range.
There are ways of dealing with values outside
of this displayable range
Make negative values positive
Clip values
Scaling transformation.
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Page 22
Lecture notes
Make negative values positive

This will certainly deal with negative values,
but not with values greater than 255.
Hence, this can only be used in specific
circumstances;
for example, when there are only a few negative
values, and when these values are themselves
close to zero.
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741
Clip values
We apply the following thresholding type operation to the

gray values x produced by the filter to obtain a displayable
value y:
This will produce an image with all pixel values in the required
range, but is not suitable if there are many gray values outside
the 0 - 255 range; in particular, if the gray values are equally
spread over a larger range.
In such a case this operation will tend to destroy the results of
the filter.
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Page 23
Lecture notes
Scaling transformation
Suppose the minimum gray value produced by the filter is gL
and the maximum value is gH.
Now we can transform all values in the range gL gH to the
range 0 - 255 by the linear transformation
Since the gradient of the line is
255/(gH g L),the equation of the
line is
Applying this transformation to all gray levels x produced by

the filter will result (after any necessary rounding) in an image
which can be displayed.
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Example
Let's apply the high pass filter
to the cameraman image
f2=[1 -2 1;-2 4 -2;1 -2 1];
cf2=filter2(f2,c);
Now the maximum and minimum values of the matrix cf2 are
well over 255 (593) and well below 0 (-541).
So we use the mat2gray function and get the result
figure,imshow(mat2gray(cf2));
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Page 24
Lecture notes
Example
f2=[1 -2 1;-2 4 -2;1 -2 1]
cf2=filter2(f2,c);
f2 =
1 -2 1
-2 4 -2
1 -2 1
cf2=filter2(f2,c);
figure,imshow(mat2gray(cf2));
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745
Example
We can generally obtain a
better result by dividing
the result of the filtering
by a constant before
displaying it:
Note: High pass filters are often used for edge detection. This can be
Kekalainen
Image Processing
746
seenJorma
quite
clearly in the imageDigital
above.
Page 25
Lecture notes
Note
Applying the previous linear transformation by hand, we
can use:
maxcf2=max(cf2(:));
mincf2=min(cf2(:));
cf2g=(cf2-mincf2)/(maxcf2-mincf2);
figure,imshow(cf2g)
The result will be a matrix of type double, with entries in

the range 0.0 1.0.
This can be viewed with imshow.
We can make it a uint8 image by multiplying by 255 first
imshow(uint8(255*cf2g))
Jorma Kekalainen
747
Note: mat2gray function

The mat2gray function automatically scales the
matrix elements to displayable values for any matrix ,
it applies a linear transformation to its elements,
with the lowest value mapping to 0.0, and the
highest value mapping to 1.0.
This means the output of mat2gray is always of type
double.
The function also requires that the input type is
double.
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748
Page 26
Lecture notes
Example
The array below represents a small grayscale image. Compute
the images that result when the image is convolved with the
-1 -1 0
mask
-1 0 1
0 1 1
20 20 20 10 10 10 10 10 10
20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 10
20 20 20 10 10 10 10 20 10
20 20 10 10 10 10 10 20 10
20 10 10 10 10 10 10 20 10
10 10 10 10 20 10 10 20 10
10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
20 10 20 20 10 10 10 20 20
20 10 10 20 10 10 20 10 20
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749
Example
>> data=[20 20 20 10 10 10 10 10 10
>> f2=[-1 -1 0;-1 0 1;0 1 1]
20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 10
f2 =
20 20 20 10 10 10 10 20 10
-1 -1 0
20 20 10 10 10 10 10 20 10
-1 0 1
20 10 10 10 10 10 10 20 10
0 1 1
10 10 10 10 20 10 10 20 10
10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
20 10 20 20 10 10 10 20 20
dataf2v=filter2(f2,data,'valid')
20 10 10 20 10 10 20 10 20]
dataf2s=filter2(f2,data,'same')
data =
dataf2f=filter2(f2,data,'full')
20 20 20 10 10 10 10 10 10
20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 10
20 20 20 10 10 10 10 20 10
20 20 10 10 10 10 10 20 10
20 10 10 10 10 10 10 20 10
10 10 10 10 20 10 10 20 10
10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
20 10 20 20 10 10 10 20 20
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750
20 10 10 20 10 10 20 Digital
10 Image
20 Processing Note: filter2(filter,image,shape)
Page 27
Lecture notes
Example
data =
20
20
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20
20
20
20
20
10
20
10
>> dataf2v=filter2(f2,data,'valid')
dataf2v =
0 -10 -10 0 0 10 0
-10 -30 -30 -20 -20 0 -10
-30 -30 -10 0 0 20 0
-30 -10 10 10 0 20 0
-10 0 10 0 -10 10 -10
10 20 10 -10 -10 10 10
0 20 0 -10 10 20 20
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
20
20
>> dataf2f=filter2(f2,data,'full')
dataf2f =
20 40 40 30 20 20 20 20 20 10 0
>> dataf2s=filter2(f2,data,'same')
40 60 40 30 30 40 40 40 30 0 -10
dataf2s =
40 40 0 -10 -10 0 0 10 0 -30 -20
60 40 30 30 40 40 40 30 0
40 40 -10 -30 -30 -20 -20 0 -10 -40 -20
40 0 -10 -10 0 0 10 0 -30
40 30 -30 -30 -10 0 0 20 0 -40 -20
40 -10 -30 -30 -20 -20 0 -10 -40
30 10 -30 -10 10 10 0 20 0 -40 -20
30 -30 -30 -10 0 0 20 0 -40
20 10 -10 0 10 0 -10 10 -10 -40 -20
10 -30 -10 10 10 0 20 0 -40
30 30 10 20 10 -10 -10 10 10 -20 -20
10 -10 0 10 0 -10 10 -10 -40
40 30 0 20 0 -10 10 20 20 -20 -30
30 10 20 10 -10 -10 10 10 -20
20 -10 -40 -20 -40 -40 -10 -20 -30 -50
-40
30
20 0 -10 10 20 20 -20 Digital Image Processing
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0 -20 -30 -20 -30 -30 -20 -30 -30 -30 -20
-10 -40 -20 -40 -40 -10 -20 -30 -50
Example
>> whos
Name
Size
data
dataf2f
dataf2s
dataf2v
f2
9x9
11x11
9x9
7x7
3x3
Bytes Class
648
968
648
392
72
Attributes
double
double
double
double
double
The mat2gray function automatically

scales the matrix elements to
displayable values.
For any matrix it applies a linear
transformation to its elements, with the
lowest value mapping to 0.0, and
the highest value mapping to 1.0.
This means the output of mat2gray is
always of type double.
The function also requires that the input
type is double.
752
figure,imshow(mat2gray(data))
title('imshow(mat2gray(data)')
figure,imshow(mat2gray(dataf2v))
title('imshow(mat2gray(dataf2v)')
figure,imshow(mat2gray(dataf2s))
title('imshow(mat2gray(dataf2s)')
figure,imshow(mat2gray(dataf2f))
title('imshow(mat2gray(dataf2f)')
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Lecture notes
Example
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Note
Matlab also has an imfilter function, which has the syntax

imfilter(x,f);
where x is an image matrix (of any type), and f is a filter.
It differs from filter2 in the different parameters it takes (read its help file),
and in that the output is always of the same class as the original image.
B = imfilter(A,h) filters the multidimensional array A with the
multidimensional filter h.
The array A can be logical or a nonsparse numeric array of any class and
dimension.
The result B has the same size and class as A.
imfilter computes each element of the output, B, using doubleprecision
floating point.
If A is an integer or logical array, imfilter truncates output elements that
exceed the range of the given type, and rounds fractional values.
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Lecture notes
Exercise
The array below represents a small grayscale image. Compute
the images that result when the image is convolved with each
of the masks (a) to (f) shown
(a)
0 -1 -1
1 0 -1
110
(b)
-1 -1 -1
222
-1 -1 -1
(c)
-1 2 -1
-1 2 -1
-1 2 -1
(d)
-1 -1 -1
-1 8 -1
Jorma Kekalainen
-1 -1 -1
(e)
111
111
111
(f)
-1 0 1
-1 0 1
-1 0 1
(g)
0 -1 0
-1 4 -1
0 -1 0
20 20 20 10 10 10 10 10 10
20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 10
20 20 20 10 10 10 10 20 10
20 20 10 10 10 10 10 20 10
20 10 10 10 10 10 10 20 10
10 10 10 10 20 10 10 20 10
10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
20 10 20 20 10 10 10 20 20
20 10 10 20 10 10 20 10 20
755
Exercise
Obtain a grayscale image of a mandrill with
the following commands:
>> load('mandrill.mat');
>> m=im2uint8(ind2gray(X,map));
Apply all the filters (a) - (g) listed in the
previous exercise to this image.
Can you now see what each filter does?
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Lecture notes
Exercise
Apply larger and larger averaging filters to the
image of the mandrill.
What is the smallest sized filter for which the
whiskers cannot be seen?
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Gaussian and Nonlinear
Filters
Page 31
Lecture notes
Gaussian filters
The fspecial function can produce many
different filters for use with the filter2
function.
Some of these are Gaussian filters.
Gaussian filters are an important class of lowpass filters, all based on the Gaussian
probability distribution function.
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One dimensional Gaussian

function
The Gaussian probability distribution function
where is the standard deviation: a large value of

produces to a flatter curve, and a small value leads to a
sharper curve.
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Lecture notes
Two dimensional Gaussian

function
A two dimensional Gaussian function is given by
The command fspecial('gaussian') produces a discrete version of this

function.
We can draw pictures of this with the surf function, and to ensure a nice
smooth result, we shall create a large filter (size 50*50) with different
standard deviations.
a=50;s=3;
g=fspecial('gaussian',[a a],s);
surf(1:a,1:a,g)
s=9;
g2=fspecial('gaussian',[a a],s);
figure,surf(1:a,1:a,g2)
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Two dimensional Gaussian

functions
=3
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Page 33
Lecture notes
Example
Gaussian filters have a blurring effect which looks very similar
to that produced by neighborhood averaging.
Let's experiment with the cameraman image, and some
different gaussian filters.
g1=fspecial('gaussian',[5,5]);
g2=fspecial('gaussian',[5,5],2);
The final parameter is the standard deviation; if not given the
default is 0.5.
The second parameter (which is also optional), gives the size
of the filter; the default is 3*3.
Note: If the filter is square, as in all the above examples, we can just give a single
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number
in each case.
Example
g1=fspecial('gaussian',[5,5]);
Now we can apply the filter to
the cameraman image matrix c
and view the result.
figure,imshow(filter2(g1,c)/256)
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Lecture notes
Example
Now we can apply the filter to
the cameraman image matrix c
and view the result.
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(5*5)filter vs. (11*11)filter
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=0.5
=1
=2
=5
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Page 35
Lecture notes
Note
We see that to obtain a spread out blurring effect, we need a
large standard deviation.
In fact, if we let the standard deviation grow large without
bound, we obtain the averaging filters as limiting values as we
see below when =100.
fspecial('gaussian',3,100)
ans =
0.1111
0.1111
0.1111
0.1111
0.1111
0.1111
0.1111
0.1111
0.1111
and we have 3*3 averaging filter.
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Example
figure,imshow(c),title('Original image')
g5=fspecial('gaussian',3,100);
title('Filtered by (''gaussian'',3,100)
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Page 36
Lecture notes
Nonlinear filters
Linear filters can be applied very quickly and
efficiently by Matlab.
However, non-linear filters can also be used.
The function to use is nlfilter, which applies a
filter to an image according to a pre-defined
function.
If the function is not already defined, we have
to create an m-file which defines it.
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Maximum and minimum filter

Here as a simple example we define a filter which takes the
maximum value in a 3*3 neighborhood:
cmax=nlfilter(c,[3,3],'max(x(:))');
The nlfilter function requires three arguments: the image
matrix, the size of the filter, and the function to be applied.
The function must be a matrix function which returns a scalar
value.
A corresponding filter which takes the minimum value can be
just as easily applied:
cmin=nlfilter(c,[3,3],'min(x(:))');
Jorma Kekalainen
Note:
nlfilter can take a long time
to process large images.
770
Page 37
Lecture notes
Example
figure,imshow(cmax)
title('Filtered by maximum filter')
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Example
We can measure the time of the operation with Matlab's tic,
toc timer: tic starts a stop watch timer, and toc stops it and
prints out the elapsed time in seconds.
Thus, on this computer applying neighborhood operation
below took time over 40 seconds.
>> c=imread('cameraman.tif');
%figure,imshow(c),title('Original image')
tic
toc
%figure,imshow(cmax)
%title('Filtered by maximum filter')
Elapsed time is 42.275047 seconds.
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Lecture notes
Example
cmin=nlfilter(c,[3,3],'min(x(:))');
figure,imshow(cmin)
title('Filtered by minimum filter')
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Comparison of results
Filtered by maximum
filter
Jorma Kekalainen
Filtered by minimum
filter
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Page 39
Lecture notes
Exercise
Display the difference between the previous
cmax and cmin images.
You can do this with
>> imshow(imsubtract(cmax,cmin))
What are you seeing here?
Display the difference between the cmax and
c images and also the difference between the
c and cmin images
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Solution
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Page 40
Lecture notes
Solution
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Comment
Note that in each case the image has lost
some sharpness, and has been brightened by
the maximum filter, and darkened by the
minimum filter.
The nlfilter function is very slow; in general
there is little call for non-linear filters except
for a few which are defined by their own
commands.
We shall investigate these in later chapters.
Note: Both these filters can in fact be more efficiently implemented by using the
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Matlab
function ordfilt2 (see its helpDigital
page).
Page 41
Lecture notes
Median filter
Recall that the median of a set is the middle value when they
are sorted.
In Matlab, median filter is implemented by the medfilt2
function:
cmed=medfilt2(c);
performs median filtering of the matrix c using the default 3by-3 neighborhood.
As with most functions, medfilt2 takes an optional parameter;
in this case a 2 element vector giving the size of the mask to
be used
cmed=medfilt2(c,[m,n]);
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Example
cmed=medfilt2(c);
figure,imshow(cmed)
title('Filtered by median filter')
Jorma Kekalainen
Median filtering effects here are

infinitesimal. However, median
filtering seems almost tailor-made for
removal of some type of noise.
780
Page 42
Lecture notes
Rank-order filters
Median filtering is a special case of a more general
process called rank-order filtering.
Rather than take the median of a set, we order the set
and take the n-th value, for some predetermined value
of n.
Matlab implements rank-order filtering with the
ordfilt2 function.
In fact the procedure for medfilt2 is really just a
wrapper for a procedure which calls ordfilt2.
There is only one reason for using rank-order filtering
instead of median filtering, and that is that it allows us
to choose the median of non-rectangular masks.
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Rank-order filters
For example, if we decided to use as a mask a (3*3)
cross shape:
then the median would be the third of these five

values when sorted.
The command to do this is
ordfilt2(c,3,[0 1 0;1 1 1;0 1 0]);
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Lecture notes
Example
ccross=ordfilt2(c,3,[0 1 0;1 1 1;0 1 0]);
figure,imshow(ccross)
title('Filtered by cross-shaped median filter')
Jorma Kekalainen
The same observations as in

the previous case of the
rectangular 3-by-3 mask.
783
Rank-order filters
In general, the second argument of ordfilt2
gives the value of the ordered set to take, and
the third element gives the domain; the nonzero values of which specify the mask, e.g.,
ccross=ordfilt2(c,3,[0 1 0;1 1 1;0 1 0]);
If we wish to use a cross with size and width 5
(so containing nine elements), we can use:
>> ordfilt2(c,5,[0 0 1 0 0;0 0 1 0 0;1 1 1 1 1;0 0 1 0 0;0 0 1 0 0]);
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Page 44

Digital Image Processing - Lecture Weeks 13 and 14

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