Digital Image Processing

(Code: 455)

National Institute of Technology Delhi

Contents
• Filtering in the Frequency Domain

• Note: Filter: A device or material for suppressing or minimizing

waves or oscillations of certain frequencies.
FREQUENCY DOMAIN FILTERING FUNDAMENTALS

• Filtering in the frequency domain consists of modifying the Fourier

transform of an image, then computing the inverse transform to obtain
the spatial domain representation of the processed result.

• The product H (u , v) F(u , v) is formed using element wise

multiplication.
FREQUENCY DOMAIN FILTERING
FUNDAMENTALS
• Low frequencies in the transform are related to slowly varying
intensity components in an image, such as the walls of a room or a
cloudless sky in an outdoor scene.
• High frequencies are caused by sharp transitions in intensity, such as
edges and noise.
• Function H(u , v) that attenuates high frequencies while passing low
frequencies (called a lowpass filter, as noted before) would blur an
image, while a filter with the opposite property (called a highpass
filter) would enhance sharp detail, but cause a reduction in contrast in
the image.
FREQUENCY DOMAIN FILTERING
FUNDAMENTALS
• we cannot pad the spatial representation of a frequency domain
transfer function in order to avoid wraparound error.
• Our objective is to work with specified filter shapes in the frequency
domain without having to be concerned with truncation issues.
• An alternative is to pad images and then create the desired filter
transfer function directly in the frequency domain, this function
being of the same size as the padded images (remember, images and
filter transfer functions must be of the same size when using the DFT)
• The phase angle is computed as the arctangent of the ratio of the
imaginary and the real parts of a complex number . Because H( , u v)
multiplies both R and I, it will cancel out when this ratio is formed.
• Filters that affect the real and imaginary parts equally, and thus have
no effect on the phase angle, are appropriately called zero-phase-shift
filters.