Teaching Graphics and Image Processing in the Scope of Information Engineering

Celso S. Kurashima and Marcelo Z.NascimentoUniversidade Federal do ABC

UFABC

Motivation

Teach image processing and computer graphics for a M.Sc. program in Information Engineering

at UFABC

How to teach an introductory course given some restrictions and historic context?

Summary

• Historic Context and Structure of Graduate Program

• Image Processing and Visualization for The M.Sc. Program on Information Engineering

• Course Details • Results and Discussions • Conclusions and Future Work

Introduction

The goal is to present our experience with a course on Computer Graphics and Image

Processing

Historic Context

Information Engineering is the convergence of areas like Information, Communications,

Multimedia Processing, and Computer Sciences; contextualized to our society’s

conditions. So, Computer Graphics and Image Processing are

two important areas of knowledge that are presently part of products or equipments used

by people and professionals.

Challenging Aspects

• Our MSc. Program in Information Engineering is quite new: First class launched in Sept. 2007. So, what’s the role of CG and IP in this context?

• Academic term is only 12 weeks at UFABC. So, which content the course should cover?

• There are no prerequisites for the registration in the course, but being a regular student. So, how deep the course should be and yet become stimulus as research field?

Overview of the Course

Official name: Image Processing and Visualization• Goal: “To present fundamental concepts involved in

the image processing steps, since acquisition mechanisms and image capturing, going through several kinds of transformations or digital processes used in practical applications, until image composition and synthesis for visualization or graphics presentations.”

Course Topics• Fundaments of Digital Image;• Visual Perception;• Image formation;• Sampling and Quantization;• Operators and Image Transformation;• Pattern Recognition;• Representation and Geometric Modeling in Graphics

Environments;• Texture Mapping;• Image Composition and Blending;• Camera Modeling and Calibration;• Stereo Vision; • Illumination and Shading in Image Synthesis.

Course References• R.C.Gonzalez; R.E.Woods. “Digital Image Processing.” 2nd ed.

Prentice Hall, 2001.

• J.C. Russ, “The Image Processing Handbook”, CRC Press, Inc., 1992.

• J.D. Foley, A. van Dam, S.K. Feiner, J.F. Hughes, "Computer Graphics - Principles and Practice", Second Edition in C, Addison-Wesley, 1996.

• Hearn, D. & Baker, M. P. “Computer Graphics with OpenGL.” Third Edition. Prentice-Hall, 2004.

Methodology

• Lectures in a computer laboratory: mixing theory and practice

• Evaluation: homework exercises, a mid-term project, and a final-term project • The projects consisted of elaborating a computer program

that applies computer graphics and image processing concepts respectively

Course Details• First offer: 2008, from mid-Feb. to late-May• Two instructors: one for image processing, and

other for computer graphics• Five graduate students enrolled• Topic presentation (in ppt), and lab guide with

instructions of programming• Main tools:

• MATLAB – for image processing• OpenGL & C/C++ – for graphics processing

Only Basic Processing Examples

Results

Evaluation by Students

• The course and the instructors were considered either satisfactory or very satisfactory by all the students.

• In their comments, the laboratory activities and the projects were considered very motivating for them.

ResultsEvaluation by Instructors

•Students performance: satisfactory performance for the proposed activities

•Grading

GRADE Quantity of students

A 2

B 2

C 1

Results

Evaluation by Instructors

• Two top students submitted their projects to different local symposiums and both were accepted

• D.C.Pereira; M.Z.Nascimento; L.P.B.Scott; C.S.Kurashima. “Avaliação de Filtros Wavelets Aplicados no Pré-Processamento de Imagens Mamográficas”. In: Anais do XI Congresso Brasileiro de Informática em Saúde, Campos do Jordão, 2008.

• O.Bassani Neto; C.S.Kurashima; M.Z.Nascimento. “OCR4JkanjiCards: Exploring Japanese Character Recognition”. In: Technical Posters of the XXI Brazilian Symposium on Computer Graphics and Image Processing (SIBGRAPI 2008), Campo Grande, MS, 2008. p. 9-10.

Results

Evaluation by Instructors

• a positive aspect of the course was the practical activities in the computer laboratory and the course projects that are able to result in research work

• the laboratory activities and the projects were considered very motivating

Discussion

• Of course the exceptional projects are not the usual case, nor is an expected this result for all students in the future.

• And because of this, the instructors discussed about the heterogeneity of the group of students enrolled in the course.

• So, the hypothesis is that even if a student has low skills in computation and programming languages, our methodology still allows students to reach the goals of the course.

Conclusions

• This course was planned to teach only fundamentals aspects and basic concepts in computer graphics and image processing, since we had some restrictions like the short term’s length and scope of the graduate program.

Conclusions

• The instructors believe the teaching approach, in which combined theoretical lectures with practical experiences in the laboratory, is positive for the students learning process on the several topics of this course. Moreover, if good students are enrolled, interesting results may arise in the end.

Limitations

• Heterogeneous group of students maybe enrolled in the course.

• The course topics are not deeply presented at all, and further readings are optional.

Future Plans

• Future plans for this course include elaboration of more practical laboratory activities, including examples of usage in several fields of research, so as to serve as references for students work.

• We also plan to use this methodology approach in the undergraduate courses related to computer graphics and image processing for B.Sc. program on Information Engineering of UFABC

Final Summary

Contributions of this work• A teaching experience on CG & IP jointly

• Limited Topics of Curricula• Course approach

• Insertion in Information Engineering

Acknowledgements

To our colleagues:Coordinators of Master Program in Information

Engineering

Students

Thanks to CAPES for their financial support

Thank you for your attention

We are very likely to receive your suggestions and collaboration. Thanks!

{celso.kurashima, marcelo.nascimento}@ufabc.edu.br