Glossary

 
Computer Vision
The analysis of image content--the conversion of pictures into descriptions.

 

Computer Graphics
The synthesis of artificial images--the creation of pictures from descriptions.

 

Image Processing
The enhancement or other manipulation of an image--the result of which is usually another image.

 

Image
A digitally sampled picture.

 

Scene
The ``reality''from which an image was taken.

 

Resolution
The amount of detail that can be discerned in an image. The usual measurement is in separable line pairs per millimeter.

 

MRI
Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

 

CT
Computed Tomography

 

CAT
Computed Axial Tomography

 

SPECT
Single-Photon Emission Computed Tomography

 

PET
Positron Emission Tomography

 

Transfer Function
The Fourier transform of an imaging system

 

Modulation Transfer Function
The magnitude part of a Transfer Function

 

Phase Transfer Function
The phase part of the Transfer Function

 

Scale Space
A an image (or function of an image) as measured at multiple scales.

 

Laplacian
Second spatial derivative.

 

Nuclear Medical Imaging
An emission modality in which a radioactive pharmaceutical is introduced into the patient. Imaging occurs by measuring the low-level radiation given off by this mixture. Examples of Nuclear Medical Imaging include PET and SPECT.

 

Binary Image
A strictly black and white image (0s and 1s). One bit of information per pixel.

 

Greyscale Image
An image consisting of scalar values representing intensity. These are usually stored as one byte per pixel (256 levels) or two bytes per pixel (65,536 levels).

 

Range Image
An image whose values represent distance from the imaging device.

 

Pixel
A single "picture element"--the smallest piece of an image.

 

Sampling
The process of recording the value of some function only at discrete points in the domain.