OpenCV By Example

Images and matrices

The most important structure in a Computer Vision is without any doubt the images. The image in Computer Vision is a representation of the physical world captured with a digital device. This picture is only a sequence of numbers stored in a matrix format, as shown in the following image. Each number is a measurement of the light intensity for the considered wavelength (for example, red, green, or blue in color images) or for a wavelength range (for panchromatic devices). Each point in an image is called a pixel (for a picture element), and each pixel can store one or more values depending on whether it is a gray, black, or white image (called a binary image as well) that stores only one value, such as 0 or 1, a gray-scale-level ...