Department of Electrical Engineering

EE330Digital Signal Processing

Lab #3 Digital Images: A/D and D/A

Lab3: Digital Images: A/D and D/A

Objectives
The objective in this lab is to introduce digital images as a second useful type of signal. We will
show how the A-to-D sampling and the D-to-A reconstruction processes are carried out for digital
images. In particular, we will show a commonly used method of image zooming (reconstruction)
that gives “poor” results.

 Familiarization with digital images.

 Working with images in Matlab.
 Sampling of images
 Familiarization with reconstruction of images

Lab Instructions
 The students should perform and demonstrate each lab task separately for step-wise evaluation
(please ensure that course instructor/lab engineer has signed each step after ascertaining its
functional verification)
 Each group shall submit one lab report on LMS within 6 days after lab is conducted. Lab report
submitted via email will not be graded.
. Students are however encouraged to practice on their own in spare time for enhancing their
Lab Report Instructions
All questions should be answered precisely to get maximum credit. Lab report must ensure following
items:
 Lab objectives
 MATLAB codes
 Results (graphs/tables) duly commented and discussed
 Conclusion

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3 Digital Images: A/D and D/A
3.1 Digital Images
In this lab we introduce digital images as a signal type for studying the effect of sampling, aliasing and
reconstruction. An image can be represented as a function x(t1,t2) of two continuous variables
representing the horizontal (t2) and vertical (t1) coordinates of a point in space.1 For monochrome
images, the signal x(t1,t2)would be a scalar function of the two spatial variables, but for color images the
function x(: , :) would have to be a vector-valued function of the two variables. 2 Moving images (such as
TV) would add a time variable to the two spatial variables. Monochrome images are displayed using
black and white and shades of gray, so they are called gray-scale images. In this lab we will consider only
sampled gray-scale still images. A sampled gray-scale still image would be represented as a two-
dimensional array of numbers of the form
x[m,n]=x(mT1,nT2) 1≤ m≤M, and 1 ≤n≤ N
Where T1and T2 are the sample spacing in the horizontal and vertical directions. Typical values of M and
N are 256 or 512 for e.g. a 512x512 image which has nearly the same resolution as a standard TV image.
In MATLAB we can represent an image as a matrix, so it would consist of M rows and N columns. The
matrix entry at (m,n)is the sample value x[m,n]—called a pixel (short for picture element).An important
property of light images such as photographs and TV pictures is that their values are always non-negative
and finite in magnitude; i.e.
0 ≤ x[m,n] ≤ Xmax<∞
This is because light images are formed by measuring the intensity of reflected or emitted light which
must always be a positive finite quantity. When stored in a computer or displayed on a monitor, the values
of x[m,n]have to be scaled relative to a maximum value Xmax. Usually an eight-bit integer representation
is used. With 8-bit integers, the maximum value (in the computer) would be Xmax=28-1=255, and there
would be 28 = 256 different gray levels for the display, from 0 to 255.

3.1.1 MATLAB Function to Display Images

You can use imshow() to display image type “help imshow” in command window of Matlab to
see how to use imshow

Lab Task 1:
3.1.2 Get Test Images
In order to probe your understanding of image display, do the following simple displays:

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 (a) Load and display the 326* 426 “lighthouse” image from lighthouse.mat. This image can
be find in the MATLAB files link. The command “ load lighthouse” will put the sampled
image into the array ww/xx. Use whos to check the size of ww after loading.

(b) Use the colon operator to extract the 200 th row of the “lighthouse” image, and make a plot of
that row as a 1-D discrete-time signal.
ww200 = ww(200,:);

Observe that the range of signal values is between 0 and 255. Which values represent white and which
ones black? Can you identify the region where the 200th row crosses the fence?

3.2 LAB TASKS: Sampling, Aliasing and Reconstruction

Lab Task 2:
3.2.1 Sampling of Images
Images that are stored in digital form on a computer have to be sampled images because they are stored in
an MxN array (i.e., a matrix). The sampling rate in the two spatial dimensions was chosen at the time the
image was digitized (in units of samples per inch if the original was a photograph). For example, the
image might have been “sampled” by a scanner where the resolution was chosen to be 300 dpi (dots per
inch).7 If we want a different sampling rate, we can simulate a lower sampling rate by simply throwing
away samples in a periodic way. For example, if every other sample is removed, the sampling rate will be
halved (in our example, the 300 dpi image would become a 150 dpi image). Usually this is called sub-
sampling or down-sampling.8

Down-sampling throws away samples, so it will shrink the size of the image. This is what is done by the
following scheme wp = ww(1:p:end,1:p:end); when we are down sampling by a factor of p.

(a) One potential problem with down-sampling is that aliasing might occur. This can be illustrated in a
dramatic fashion with the lighthouse image.
Load the lighthouse.mat file which has the image stored in a variable called ww. When you
check the size of the image, you’ll find that it is not square. Now down sample the lighthouse
image by factor 2.What is the size of the down-sampled image? Notice the aliasing in the down-
sampled image, which is surprising since no new values are being created by the down-sampling
process. Describe how the aliasing appears visually. 9 Which parts of the image show the aliasing
effects most dramatically?

3.2.1.1 Down-Sampling
For the lighthouse picture, down sampled by two in the warm-up section:

(a) Describe how the aliasing appears visually. Compare the original to the down sampled image. Which
parts of the image show the aliasing effects most dramatically?

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Lab Task 3:

3.2.2 Reconstruction of Images

When an image has been sampled, we can fill in the missing samples by doing interpolation. For images,
this would be analogous to the sine-wave interpolation which is part of the reconstruction process in a D-
to-A converter. We could use a “square pulse” or a “triangular pulse” or other pulse shapes for the
reconstruction.

Figure 1: 2-D Interpolation broken down into row and column operations: the gray dots indicate repeated
data values created by a zero-order hold; or, in the case of linear interpolation, they are the interpolated
values.

For these reconstruction experiments, use the lighthouse image, down-sampled by a factor of 3 (similar
to what you did in Section 2.3). You will have to generate this by loading in the image from
lighthouse.mat to get the image which is in the array called xx. A down-sampled lighthouse image
should be created and stored in the variable xx3. The objective will be to reconstruct an approximation to
the original lighthouse image, which is 256x256, from the smaller down-sampled image.

(a) The simplest interpolation would be reconstruction with a square pulse which produces a “zero-order
hold.” Here is a method that works for a one-dimensional signal (i.e., one row or one column of the
image), assuming that we start with a row vector xr1, and the result is the row vector xr1hold.
xr1 = (-2).ˆ(0:6);
L = length(xr1);
nn = ceil((0.999:1:4*L)/4); %<--Round up to the integer part
xr1hold = xr1(nn);

Plot the vector xr1hold to verify that it is a zero-order hold version derived from xr1. Explain what
values are contained in the indexing vector nn. If xr1holdis treated as an interpolated version of xr1,
then what is the interpolation factor? Your lab report should include an explanation for this part, but plots
are optional—use them if they simplify the explanation.

(b) Now return to the down-sampled lighthouse image, and process all the rows of xx3 to fill in the
missing points. Use the zero-order hold idea from part (a), but do it for an interpolation factor of 3. Call
the result xholdrows. Display xholdrows as an image, and compare it to the down sampled image
xx3; compare the size of the images as well as their content.

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(c) Now process all the columns of xholdrows to fill in the missing points in each column and call the
result xhold. Compare the result (xhold) to the original image lighthouse. Include your code for parts
(b) and (c) in the lab report.

(d) Linear interpolation can be done in MATLAB using the interp1function (that’s “interp-one”).When
unsure about a command, use help. Its default mode is linear interpolation, which is equivalent to using
the ’*linear’ option, but interp1can also do other types of polynomial interpolation. Here is an
example on a 1-D signal:
n1 = 0:6;
xr1 = (-2).ˆn1;
tti = 0:0.1:6; %--locations between the n1 indicesxr1
linear = interp1(n1,xr1,tti); %--function is INTERP-ONE
stem(tti,xr1linear)
For the example above, what is the interpolation factor when converting xr1to xr1linear?
(e) In the case of the lighthouse image, you need to carry out a linear interpolation operation on both
the rows and columns of the down-sampled image xx3. This requires two calls to the interp1 function,
because one call will only process all the columns of a matrix. 10 Name the interpolated output image
xxlinear. Include your code for this part in the lab report.

(f) Compare xxlinear to the original image lighthouse. Comment on the visual appearance of the
“reconstructed” image versus the original; point out differences and similarities. Can the reconstruction
(i.e., zooming) process remove the aliasing effects from the down-sampled lighthouse image?

(g) Compare the quality of the linear interpolation result to the zero-order hold result. Point out regions
where they differ and try to justify this difference by estimating the local frequency content. In other
words, look for regions of “low-frequency” content and “high-frequency” content and see how the
interpolation quality is dependent on this factor. A couple of questions to think about: Are edges low
frequency or high frequency features? Are the fence posts low frequency or high frequency features? Is
the background a low frequency or high frequency feature?
Comment: You might use MATLAB’s zooming feature to show details in small patches of the output
image. However, be careful because zooming does its own interpolation, probably a zero-order hold.

Warnings
Images obtained from JPEG files might come in many different formats. Two precautions are necessary:

1. If MATLAB loads the image and stores it as 8-bit integers, then MATLAB will use an internal data
type called uint8. The function show img( )cannot handle this format, but there is a conversion
function called double( )that will convert the 8-bit integers to double-precision floating-point for use
with filtering and processing programs.
yy = double(xx);

You can convert back to 8-bit values with the function uint8().

2. If the image is a color photograph, then it is actually composed of three “image planes” and MATLAB
will store it as a 3-D array. For example, the result of whosfor a 545x668 color image would
give:

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In this case, you should use MATLAB’s image display functions such as imshow( )to see the color
image. Or you can convert the color image to gray-scale with the function rgb2gray( ).

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Notes:

1. The variables t1 and t2 do not denote time, they represent spatial dimensions. Thus, their units
would be inches or some other unit of length.
2. For example, an RGB color system needs three values at each spatial location: one for red, one for
green and one for blue.
3. If you have the MATLAB Image Processing Toolbox, then the function imshow.m can be used
instead.
4. If the MATLAB function imagesc.m is used to display the image, two features will be missing:
(1) the color map may beincorrect because it will not default to gray, and (2) the size of the image
will not be a true pixel-for-pixel rendition of the image on the computer screen.
5. The MATLAB function show_img has an option to perform this scaling while making the image
display.
6. An alternative is to use the free program called IRFANVIEW, which can do image editing and also
has screen capture capability.It can be obtained from
http://www.irfanview.com/english.htm.
7. For this example, the sampling periods would be T1 = T2 = 1/300 inches.
8. The Sampling Theorem applies to digital images, so there is a Nyquist Rate that depends on the
maximum spatial frequency in the image.
9. One difficulty with showing aliasing is that we must display the pixels of the image exactly. This
almost never happens because most monitors and printers will perform some sort of interpolation to
adjust the size of the image to match the resolution of the device. In MATLAB we can override these
size changes by using the function truesize which is part of the Image Processing Toolbox. In the
SP First Toolbox, an equivalent function called trusize.m is provided.
10. Use a matrix transpose in between the interpolation calls. The transpose will turn rows into columns.
11. Optional means that you don’t have to include this in a lab report. This section provided in case you
are curious and want to learn more on your own.

Reference:

Lab is Taken From Signal Processing First

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