AN INTERACTIVE IMAGE PROCESSING SYSTEM

Image processing is one of the main topic in digital signal processing which has rapidly grown with various applications in science, engineering, medicine, etc. It is usually offered at a taught course to the students studying electronic/electrical engineering or computer science in many institutes. Moreover, research in this area has attracted much attention and resource. However, advanced image processing equipment was very expensive in the past. This, together with the scarcity of image processing package, hinder the students from getting hands-on experience and understanding of the theory of image processing.
Nowadays, the cost of personal computer is very low and with high computational power that make it a perfect platform for image processing system. The Apple Macintosh computer was selected as the image processing system because of its mature, welldeveloped and truly user-friendly window-based menu-driven environment provided. The aim of this project is to develop an integrated and interactive package for image processing. The package consists of two software tools. The first one is used to generate artificial images based on mathematical functions or user-defined patterns. The second software tool is an interactive program for image analysis.
The software package will be installed in some more powerful computers in the Image Processing Laboratory. Those students interested in image processing can have the opportunity to use the package. A questionnaire will be designed as a means to obtain feedback from the students on various aspects such as userfriendliness, flexibility, extensibility, usefulness, etc. This information is important in the future improvement of the package. © 1992 IEEE.