The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to computer vision:

Computer vision Computer vision is an Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate t ...

–

interdisciplinary field Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...

that deals with how computers can be made to gain high-level understanding from

digital image A digital image is an image composed of picture elements, also known as ''pixels'', each with '' finite'', '' discrete quantities'' of numeric representation for its intensity or gray level that is an output from its two-dimensional functions f ...

s or

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

s. From the perspective of

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...

, it seeks to automate tasks that the human visual system can do. Computer vision tasks include methods for acquiring digital images (through

image sensor An image sensor or imager is a sensor that detects and conveys information used to make an image. It does so by converting the variable attenuation of light waves (as they pass through or reflect off objects) into signals, small bursts of c ...

s),

image processing An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimension ...

, and

image analysis Image analysis or imagery analysis is the extraction of meaningful information from images; mainly from digital images by means of digital image processing techniques. Image analysis tasks can be as simple as reading bar coded tags or as sophi ...

, to reach an understanding of digital images. In general, it deals with the extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information that the computer can interpret. The image data can take many forms, such as video sequences, views from multiple cameras, or multi-dimensional data from a medical scanner. As a technological discipline, computer vision seeks to apply its theories and models for the construction of computer vision systems. As a scientific discipline, computer vision is concerned with the theory behind artificial systems that extract information from images.

Branches of computer vision

* Computer stereo vision *

Underwater computer vision Underwater computer vision is a subfield of computer vision. In recent years, with the development of underwater vehicles ( ROV, AUV, gliders), the need to be able to record and process huge amounts of information has become increasingly impo ...

History of computer vision

History of computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the human ...

Computer vision subsystems

Image enhancement

* Image denoising *

Image histogram An image histogram is a type of histogram that acts as a graphical representation of the tonal distribution in a digital image. It plots the number of pixels for each tonal value. By looking at the histogram for a specific image a viewer will b ...

Inpainting Inpainting is a conservation process where damaged, deteriorated, or missing parts of an artwork are filled in to present a complete image. This process is commonly used in image restoration. It can be applied to both physical and digital art ...

* Histogram equalization * Tone mapping *

Retinex Color constancy is an example of subjective constancy and a feature of the human color perception system which ensures that the perceived color of objects remains relatively constant under varying illumination conditions. A green apple ...

Gamma correction Gamma correction or gamma is a nonlinear operation used to encode and decode luminance or tristimulus values in video or still image systems. Gamma correction is, in the simplest cases, defined by the following power-law expression: : V_\text ...

Anisotropic diffusion In image processing and computer vision, anisotropic diffusion, also called Perona–Malik diffusion, is a technique aiming at reducing image noise without removing significant parts of the image content, typically edges, lines or other details t ...

(Perona–Malik equation)

Transformations

* Affine transform *

Homography (computer vision) In the field of computer vision, any two images of the same planar surface in space are related by a homography (assuming a pinhole camera model). This has many practical applications, such as image rectification, image registration, or came ...

* Hough transform *

Radon transform In mathematics, the Radon transform is the integral transform which takes a function ''f'' defined on the plane to a function ''Rf'' defined on the (two-dimensional) space of lines in the plane, whose value at a particular line is equal to the ...

* Walsh–Hadamard transform

Filtering, Fourier and wavelet transforms and image compression

Image compression Image compression is a type of data compression applied to digital images, to reduce their cost for storage or transmission. Algorithms may take advantage of visual perception and the statistical properties of image data to provide superior re ...

* Filter bank *

Gabor filter In image processing, a Gabor filter, named after Dennis Gabor, is a linear filter used for texture analysis, which essentially means that it analyzes whether there is any specific frequency content in the image in specific directions in a locali ...

JPEG 2000 JPEG 2000 (JP2) is an image compression standard and coding system. It was developed from 1997 to 2000 by a Joint Photographic Experts Group committee chaired by Touradj Ebrahimi (later the JPEG president), with the intention of superseding th ...

* Adaptive filtering

Color vision

Visual perception Visual perception is the ability to interpret the surrounding environment through photopic vision (daytime vision), color vision, scotopic vision (night vision), and mesopic vision (twilight vision), using light in the visible spectrum refl ...

Human visual system model A human visual system model (HVS model) is used by image processing, video processing and computer vision experts to deal with biological and psychological processes that are not yet fully understood. Such a model is used to simplify the behavi ...

Color matching function The CIE 1931 color spaces are the first defined quantitative links between distributions of wavelengths in the electromagnetic visible spectrum, and physiologically perceived colors in human color vision. The mathematical relationships that defin ...

Color space A color space is a specific organization of colors. In combination with color profiling supported by various physical devices, it supports reproducible representations of colorwhether such representation entails an analog or a digital representa ...

Color appearance model A color appearance model (CAM) is a mathematical model that seeks to describe the perceptual aspects of human color vision, i.e. viewing conditions under which the appearance of a color does not tally with the corresponding physical measurement o ...

* Color management system *

Color mapping Color mapping is a function that maps (transforms) the colors of one (source) image to the colors of another (target) image. A color mapping may be referred to as the algorithm that results in the mapping function or the algorithm that transform ...

Color model A color model is an abstract mathematical model describing the way colors can be represented as tuples of numbers, typically as three or four values or color components. When this model is associated with a precise description of how the compo ...

* Color profile

Feature extraction

* Active contour *

Blob detection In computer vision, blob detection methods are aimed at detecting regions in a digital image that differ in properties, such as brightness or color, compared to surrounding regions. Informally, a blob is a region of an image in which some propert ...

Canny edge detector The Canny edge detector is an edge detection operator that uses a multi-stage algorithm to detect a wide range of edges in images. It was developed by John F. Canny in 1986. Canny also produced a ''computational theory of edge detection'' explai ...

* Contour detection *

Edge detection Edge detection includes a variety of mathematical methods that aim at identifying edges, curves in a digital image at which the image brightness changes sharply or, more formally, has discontinuities. The same problem of finding discontinuiti ...

* Edge linking * Harris Corner Detector *

Histogram of oriented gradients The histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) is a feature descriptor used in computer vision and image processing for the purpose of object detection. The technique counts occurrences of gradient orientation in localized portions of an image. This met ...

(HOG) *

Random sample consensus Random sample consensus (RANSAC) is an iterative method to estimate parameters of a mathematical model from a set of observed data that contains outliers, when outliers are to be accorded no influence on the values of the estimates. Therefore, it a ...

(RANSAC) *

Scale-invariant feature transform The scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) is a computer vision algorithm to detect, describe, and match local '' features'' in images, invented by David Lowe in 1999. Applications include object recognition, robotic mapping and navigation, ...

(SIFT)

Pose estimation

Bundle adjustment In photogrammetry and computer stereo vision, bundle adjustment is simultaneous refining of the 3D Coordinate system, coordinates describing the scene geometry, the parameters of the relative motion, and the optical characteristics of the camera(s ...

* Articulated body pose estimation (BoPoE) *

Direct linear transformation Direct linear transformation (DLT) is an algorithm which solves a set of variables from a set of similarity relations: : \mathbf_ \propto \mathbf \, \mathbf_ for \, k = 1, \ldots, N where \mathbf_ and \mathbf_ are known vectors, \, ...

(DLT) *

Epipolar geometry Epipolar geometry is the geometry of stereo vision. When two cameras view a 3D scene from two distinct positions, there are a number of geometric relations between the 3D points and their projections onto the 2D images that lead to constraints ...

* Fundamental matrix *

Pinhole camera model The pinhole camera model describes the mathematical relationship between the coordinates of a point in three-dimensional space and its projection onto the image plane of an ''ideal'' pinhole camera, where the camera aperture is described as a p ...

Projective geometry In mathematics, projective geometry is the study of geometric properties that are invariant with respect to projective transformations. This means that, compared to elementary Euclidean geometry, projective geometry has a different setting, pr ...

Trifocal tensor In computer vision, the trifocal tensor (also tritensor) is a 3×3×3 array of numbers (i.e., a tensor) that incorporates all projective geometric relationships among three views. It relates the coordinates of corresponding points or lines in thr ...

Registration

Active appearance model An active appearance model (AAM) is a computer vision algorithm for matching a statistical model of object shape and appearance to a new image. They are built during a training phase. A set of images, together with coordinates of landmarks that appe ...

(AAM) *

Cross-correlation In signal processing, cross-correlation is a measure of similarity of two series as a function of the displacement of one relative to the other. This is also known as a ''sliding dot product'' or ''sliding inner-product''. It is commonly used f ...

Geometric hashing In computer science, geometric hashing is a method for efficiently finding two-dimensional objects represented by discrete points that have undergone an affine transformation, though extensions exist to other object representations and transformat ...

* Graph cut segmentation * Least squares estimation *

Image pyramid Pyramid, or pyramid representation, is a type of multi-scale signal representation developed by the computer vision, image processing and signal processing communities, in which a signal or an image is subject to repeated smoothing and subsam ...

Image segmentation In digital image processing and computer vision, image segmentation is the process of partitioning a digital image into multiple image segments, also known as image regions or image objects ( sets of pixels). The goal of segmentation is to simpl ...

Level-set method Level-set methods (LSM) are a conceptual framework for using level sets as a tool for numerical analysis of surfaces and shapes. The advantage of the level-set model is that one can perform numerical computations involving curves and surfaces on a ...

Markov random field In the domain of physics and probability, a Markov random field (MRF), Markov network or undirected graphical model is a set of random variables having a Markov property described by an undirected graph. In other words, a random field is said to b ...

s *

Medial axis The medial axis of an object is the set of all points having more than one closest point on the object's boundary. Originally referred to as the topological skeleton, it was introduced in 1967 by Harry Blum as a tool for biological shape reco ...

* Motion field *

Motion vector Motion estimation is the process of determining ''motion vectors'' that describe the transformation from one 2D image to another; usually from adjacent frames in a video sequence. It is an ill-posed problem as the motion is in three dimensions b ...

Multispectral imaging Multispectral imaging captures image data within specific wavelength ranges across the electromagnetic spectrum. The wavelengths may be separated by filters or detected with the use of instruments that are sensitive to particular wavelengths, ...

* Normalized cut segmentation *

Optical flow Optical flow or optic flow is the pattern of apparent motion of objects, surfaces, and edges in a visual scene caused by the relative motion between an observer and a scene. Optical flow can also be defined as the distribution of apparent veloci ...

Particle filter Particle filters, or sequential Monte Carlo methods, are a set of Monte Carlo algorithms used to solve filtering problems arising in signal processing and Bayesian statistical inference. The filtering problem consists of estimating the int ...

ing *

Scale space Scale-space theory is a framework for multi-scale signal representation developed by the computer vision, image processing and signal processing communities with complementary motivations from physics and biological vision. It is a formal theor ...

Visual recognition

Object recognition Object recognition – technology in the field of computer vision for finding and identifying objects in an image or video sequence. Humans recognize a multitude of objects in images with little effort, despite the fact that the image of the ...

(SIFT) *

Gesture recognition Gesture recognition is a topic in computer science and language technology with the goal of interpreting human gestures via mathematical algorithms. It is a subdiscipline of computer vision. Gestures can originate from any bodily motion or sta ...

* Bag-of-words model in computer vision * Kadir–Brady saliency detector *

Eigenface An eigenface () is the name given to a set of eigenvectors when used in the computer vision problem of human face recognition. The approach of using eigenfaces for recognition was developed by Sirovich and Kirby and used by Matthew Turk and Al ...

Commercial computer vision systems

* 5DX *

Aphelion (software) The ''Aphelion Imaging Software Suite'' is a software suite that includes three base products - Aphelion Lab, Aphelion Dev, and Aphelion for addressing image processing and image analysis applications. The suite also includes a set of extensi ...

Microsoft PixelSense Microsoft PixelSense (formerly called Microsoft Surface) was an interactive surface computing platform that allowed one or more people to use and touch real-world objects, and share digital content at the same time. The PixelSense platform consist ...

* Poseidon drowning detection system * Visage SDK

Applications

3D reconstruction from multiple images 3D reconstruction from multiple images is the creation of three-dimensional models from a set of images. It is the reverse process of obtaining 2D images from 3D scenes. The essence of an image is a projection from a 3D scene onto a 2D pla ...

* Audio-visual speech recognition *

Augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory Modality (human–computer interaction), modalities, including visual, Hearing, auditory, hap ...

* Augmented reality-assisted surgery *

Automated optical inspection Automated optical inspection (AOI) is an automated visual inspection of printed circuit board (PCB) (or LCD, transistor) manufacture where a camera autonomously scans the device under test for both catastrophic failure (e.g. missing component) and ...

Automatic image annotation Automatic image annotation (also known as automatic image tagging or linguistic indexing) is the process by which a computer system automatically assigns metadata in the form of captioning or keywords to a digital image. This application of comp ...

Automatic number plate recognition Automatic number-plate recognition (ANPR; see also other names below) is a technology that uses optical character recognition on images to read vehicle registration plates to create vehicle location data. It can use existing closed-circuit t ...

Automatic target recognition Automatic target recognition (ATR) is the ability for an algorithm or device to recognize targets or other objects based on data obtained from sensors. Target recognition was initially done by using an audible representation of the received signal ...

Check weigher A checkweigher is an automatic or manual machine for checking the weight of packaged commodities. It is normally found at the offgoing end of a production line, production process and is used to ensure that the weight of a pack of the commodity ...

* Closed-circuit television * Computer stereo vision *

Contextual image classification Contextual image classification, a topic of pattern recognition in computer vision, is an approach of classification based on contextual information in images. "Contextual" means this approach is focusing on the relationship of the nearby pixels, wh ...

DARPA LAGR Program {{short description, United States government program involved in the development of unmanned ground vehicles The Learning Applied to Ground Vehicles (LAGR) program, which ran from 2004 until 2008, had the goal of accelerating progress in autonomous ...

Digital video fingerprinting Video fingerprinting or video hashing are a class of dimension reduction techniques in which a system identifies, extracts, and then summarizes characteristic components of a video as a unique or a set of multiple perceptual hashes, enabling that ...

* Document mosaicing *

Facial recognition system A facial recognition system is a technology capable of matching a human face from a digital image or a video frame against a database of faces. Such a system is typically employed to authenticate users through ID verification services, and wor ...

s *

GazoPa GazoPa was an image search engine that used features from an image to search for and identify similar images which closed in 2011. GazoPa began in TechCrunch50 in 2008 before launching into a state of open beta A software release life cycle i ...

* Geometric feature learning *

Image collection exploration Image collection exploration is a mechanism to explore large digital image repositories. The huge amount of digital images produced every day through different devices such as mobile phones bring forth challenges for the storage, indexing and acces ...

Image retrieval An image retrieval system is a computer system used for browsing, searching and retrieving images from a large database of digital images. Most traditional and common methods of image retrieval utilize some method of adding metadata such as capti ...

Content-based image retrieval Content-based image retrieval, also known as query by image content ( QBIC) and content-based visual information retrieval (CBVIR), is the application of computer vision techniques to the image retrieval problem, that is, the problem of searching ...

** Reverse image search *

Image-based modeling and rendering In computer graphics and computer vision, image-based modeling and rendering (IBMR) methods rely on a set of two-dimensional images of a scene to generate a three-dimensional model and then render some novel views of this scene. The traditional ...

* Integrated mail processing *

Iris recognition Iris recognition is an automated method of biometric identification that uses mathematical pattern-recognition techniques on video images of one or both of the irises of an individual's eyes, whose complex patterns are unique, stable, and can ...

Machine vision Machine vision (MV) is the technology and methods used to provide imaging-based automatic inspection and analysis for such applications as automatic inspection, process control, and robot guidance, usually in industry. Machine vision refers to m ...

* Mobile mapping * Navigation system components for: **

Autonomous car A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car, driver-less car, or robotic car (robo-car), is a car that is capable of traveling without human input.Xie, S.; Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Ding, Z.; Arvin, F.,Distributed Motion Planning for S ...

s **

Mobile robot A mobile robot is an automatic machine that is capable of locomotion.Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Lanzon, A.,Group Coordinated Control of Networked Mobile Robots with Applications to Object Transportation IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 202 ...

s *

Object detection Object detection is a computer technology related to computer vision and image processing that deals with detecting instances of semantic objects of a certain class (such as humans, buildings, or cars) in digital images and videos. Well-researched ...

* Optical braille recognition *

Optical character recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronic or mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a sc ...

** Intelligent character recognition * Pedestrian detection *

People counter A people counter is an electronic device that is used to measure the number of people traversing a certain passage or entrance. Examples include simple manual clickers, smart-flooring technologies, infrared beams, thermal imaging systems, WiFi track ...

Physical computing Physical computing involves interactive systems that can sense and respond to the world around them. While this definition is broad enough to encompass systems such as smart automotive traffic control systems or factory automation processes, it ...

Red light camera A red light camera (short for red light running camera ) is a type of traffic enforcement camera that photographs a vehicle that has entered an intersection after the traffic signal controlling the intersection has turned red. By automatically pho ...

Remote sensing Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object, in contrast to in situ or on-site observation. The term is applied especially to acquiring information about Ear ...

Smart camera A smart camera (sensor) or intelligent camera (sensor) or (smart) vision sensor or intelligent vision sensor or smart optical sensor or intelligent optical sensor or smart visual sensor or intelligent visual sensor is a machine vision system whic ...

Traffic enforcement camera A traffic enforcement camera (also red light camera, speed camera, road safety camera, road rule camera, photo radar, photo enforcement, Gatso, safety camera, bus lane camera, flash for cash, Safe-T-Cam, No contact apprehension camera dependin ...

Traffic sign recognition Traffic-sign recognition (TSR) is a technology by which a vehicle is able to recognize the traffic signs put on the road e.g. "speed limit" or "children" or "turn ahead". This is part of the features collectively called ADAS. The technology is b ...

Vehicle infrastructure integration Vehicle infrastructure integration (VII) is an initiative fostering research and applications development for a series of technologies directly linking road vehicles to their physical surroundings, first and foremost in order to improve road saf ...

* Velocity Moments *

Video content analysis Video content analysis or video content analytics (VCA), also known as video analysis or video analytics (VA), is the capability of automatically analyzing video to detect and determine temporal and spatial events. This technical capability is used ...

View synthesis View synthesis aims to create new views of a specific subject starting from a number of pictures taken from given point of views. Currently a study branch of Computer Science Research, Vision Research and Artificial Intelligence fields are involve ...

* Visual sensor network * Visual Word * Water remote sensing

Computer vision companies

3DFLOW 3DFlow, srl is an Italian software house operating in the field of Computer Vision and Image Processing. It was established in 2011 as a spin-off of the University of Verona and in 2012 it became a spin-off of the University of Udine. Most kno ...

* Automatix * Clarifai *

Cognex Corporation Cognex Corporation is an American manufacturer of machine vision systems, software and sensors used in automated manufacturing to inspect and identify parts, detect defects, verify product assembly, and guide assembly robots. Cognex is headquar ...

* Datagen *

Diffbot Diffbot is a developer of machine learning and computer vision algorithms and public APIs for extracting data from web pages / web scraping to create a knowledge base. The company has gained interest from its application of computer visio ...

* IBM * InspecVision * Isra Vision *

Kinesense Kinesense is computer vision and video analytics company based in Dublin, Ireland. The company is one of largest suppliers of computer vision products to the UK police, who use the technology to search CCTV content in the course of criminal invest ...

Mobileye Mobileye Global Inc. is a company developing autonomous driving technologies and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) including cameras, computer chips and software. Mobileye was acquired by Intel in 2017 and went public again in 2022. Mob ...

* Scantron Corporation * Teledyne DALSA * VIEW Engineering *

Zivid Zivid is a Norwegian machine vision technology company headquartered in Oslo, Norway. It designs and sells 3D color cameras with vision software that are used in autonomous industrial robot cells, collaborative robot ( cobot) cells and other i ...

* Warden Machinery

Computer vision publications

* Electronic Letters on Computer Vision and Image Analysis * International Journal of Computer Vision

Computer vision organizations

Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition The Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) is an annual conference on computer vision and pattern recognition, which is regarded as one of the most important conferences in its field. According to Google Scholar Metrics (2022 ...

European Conference on Computer Vision The European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) is a biennial research conference with the proceedings published by Springer Science+Business Media. Similar to ICCV in scope and quality, it is held those years which ICCV is not. It is considere ...

* International Conference on Computer Vision * International Conferences in Central Europe on Computer Graphics, Visualization and Computer Vision

Persons influential in computer vision

References

External links

USC Iris computer vision conference list

A complete list of papers of the most relevant computer vision conferences.
Computer Vision Online
News, source code, datasets and job offers related to computer vision.

CVonline
Bob Fisher's Compendium of Computer Vision.
British Machine Vision Association
Supporting computer vision research within the UK via the BMVC and

MIUA Medical Image Understanding and Analysis (MIUA) is a UK-based meeting for the communication of research related to image analysis and its application to medical imaging and biomedicine. The meetings provide an opportunity to present and discus ...

conferences, ''Annals of the BMVA'' (open-source journal),

BMVA Summer School BMVA Summer School is an annual summer school on computer vision, organised by the British Machine Vision Association and Society for Pattern Recognition (BMVA). The course is residential, usually held over five days, and consists of lectures an ...

and one-day meetings {{Outline footer Computer vision topics