Image Processing

Description Topics

• Image Acquisition, Import, and Export
• Image Processing, Analysis, and Visualization
• Algorithm Development and Application Deployment
• Video and Image Processing System Design
• Geospatial Computing
• Medical Imaging

Image Acquisition, Import, and Export

MathWorks tools support images generated by a wide range of devices, including digital cameras, frame grabbers, satellite and airborne sensors, medical imaging devices, microscopes, telescopes, and other scientific instruments. You can visualize, analyze, and process these images in many data types, including single- and double-precision floating-point and signed or unsigned 8-, 16-, and 32-bit integers.

There are several ways to import or export images into and out of the MATLAB environment for processing. The Image Acquisition Toolbox provides functions for acquiring images and video from PC-compatible frame grabber cards and video devices. The toolbox supports frame grabbers from Matrox and Data Translation and video capture devices, including Web cameras and USB and Firewire scientific video cameras.

The Image Acquisition Toolbox lets you connect to a wide range of image acquisition hardware from many different vendors.

The Database Toolbox enables you to exchange images between MATLAB and an ODBC/JBDC-compliant database. With the Visual Query Builder tool within the toolbox, you can query stored images without needing to know or learn SQL. This gives you the ability to access, analyze, and store your images quickly and easily from within MATLAB.

MATLAB supports standard data and image formats, including JPEG, TIFF, PNG, HDF, HDF-EOS, FITS, Microsoft Excel, ASCII, and binary files. It also supports multiband image formats, such as LANDSAT. Low-level I/O functions enable you to develop custom routines for working with any data format.

Within the Simulink environment, the Video and Image Processing Blockset supports multimedia files such as AVI, MPEG, WMV, or any file types supported by Windows Media (on the Windows platform only). In addition, you can use the Image Acquisition Toolbox with Simulink to import live video from DirectX compatible hardware devices on Windows platforms.

For medical imaging, the Image Processing Toolbox supports the DICOM file format. You can read and write DICOM images and associated metadata and create custom data dictionaries in MATLAB.