A “Secondary” Look at Digital Image Processing
Alasdair McAndrew
Alasdair.McAndrew@vu.edu.au
School of Computer Science and Mathematics
Victoria University of Technology
PO Box 14428, Melbourne 8001, Victoria, Australia
ABSTRACT
For the past few years, we have run a highly successful ac-
tivity teaching some elementary digital image processing to
students at years 9 and 10 of secondary school. The activity
involves working with a digital camera, taking, capturing
and saving images, and exploring pixel values and their re-
lationship to image brightness and colour. We also perform
some elementary processing tasks: thresholding, changing
spatial resolution and quantization. Students then have a
brief introduction to spatial filtering, followed by some ex-
amples: image blurring and edge detection. The activity
finishes with some binary morphology. Given that digital
image processing is usually offered only at the upper under-
graduate or postgraduate level, we have demonstrated that
it is quite possible to introduce some image processing con-
cepts in a friendly and supportive environment to students
in the middle years of their secondary schooling.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
I.4.0 [Image Processing And Computer Vision]: Gen-
eral—Image processing software; K.3.2 [Computers And
Education]: Computer and Information Science Educa-
tion—Computer science education, Literacy
General Terms
Education
Keywords
digital image processing, secondary education, elementary
computer science, enquiry-based learning
1. INTRODUCTION
Digital image processing courses are typically offered at
the upper undergraduate and postgraduate levels of elec-
trical engineering programs, due, in part, to the mathe-
matical requirements of such courses. These requirements
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Anne Venables
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can be considerable: multivariate calculus, linear algebra,
Fourier transforms, logic and set theory, to name but a
few. Dougherty [3] provides a very large list of different
mathematical topics which have relevance to modern im-
age processing. Other authors [13] have stressed the need
for mathematics in the study of image processing. However,
for explaining the fundamentals much of this mathematics is
both unnecessary and obstructive. Since these fundamentals
can be explained using minimal, junior high school mathe-
matics [9], is it possible and/or desirable to introduce image
processing to secondary students?
Any introduction to image processing should be stimu-
lating and instructive, whilst being appropriate to the skill
level of the learners. An inspection of the current prescribed
government curriculum for Information Technology at upper
secondary school level, the CSF II (Curriculum Standards
and Framework) [19] lists amongst its examples of suitable
studies in the subject: simulations, robotics, data handling
and presentation, multimedia and web authoring. It can
be seen that although the study, for example, of computer
programming or mathematically oriented computer science
is not prohibited by the CSF, it is not actually encouraged.
Thus a student may study Information Technology and not
have any exposure to these areas, let alone digital image
processing.
There are good arguments [18] for image processing to
be introduced to students, much earlier in their academic
careers than when they eventually arrive at university. As
many students have difficulty seeing the relevance of mathe-
matics and science to everyday life, they can lose interest in
these areas long before selection of their university course is
made. Using image processing as the vehicle, we agree with
Raphael and Greenberg [14], that it is possible to create a
positive learning experience for secondary students. Our ac-
tivity would be specifically designed as an introduction to
computer science. This idea has already been proposed by
Tanimoto et al [18], but as far as we know, has not been
implemented. Such an activity would need to be instructive
and stimulating, and hopefully it would spark a genuine in-
terest in the sciences amongst the participants, long before
the fateful day of university course selection.
On the premise that science should be fun and also in-
spired by the experiences of the Mathematics Experiences
Through Image Processing (METIP) project at the Univer-
sity of Washington [18] and others [8, 14], the first author
set about creating a set of introductory image processing
exercises targeted at mid secondary school level. These ex-
ercises needed to be pedagogically sound and gender neutral.
337
As well the exercises needed to be fun to do since students
learn only if they are motivated and ready to learn [7]. Us-
ing a set of discovery activities, the exercises would lead
students through the seemingly difficult concepts of gray
scaling, quantization, resolution, thresholding and convolu-
tion. A final consideration in the design of these activities
was that, given the appropriate software and hardware, they
could be run anywhere and at anytime.
For a number of years, these introductory digital image
processing exercises have been presented as the “Fun with
Faces” activity for secondary schools by the School of Com-
puter Science and Mathematics at Victoria University. Stu-
dent and school feedback has been very positive and en-
couraging. As a result, the “Fun with Faces” activity has
become the school’s flagship public relations exercise. The
next section of the paper describes “Fun with Faces” activity
in some detail. Section 3 covers some pedagogical consid-
erations whilst section 4 provides some student feedback.
Conclusions and further work are found in section 5.
2. THE ACTIVITY
“Fun With Faces” requires that each student have access
to a computer with the freely available software “Scion Im-
age” 1 having been installed. Scion Image, originally written
at the National Institutes of Health, is a freely available
“powerful and complete image acquisition environment” [17]
that supports color and grayscale images. It can be used “to
capture, display, analyze, enhance, measure, annotate, and
output images”.
Additionally, students need access to a digital camera or
more conveniently a webcam, commonly available in infor-
mation technology classrooms, with which to photograph
themselves. The activity also assumes that students are fa-
miliar with the basic operations of a Microsoft Windows
based computer system: that they can open and save files,
navigate through different directories, and juggle two or
more open applications.
Upon commencement, each student is supplied with a
worksheet of instructions punctuated by boxes for students
to write down their comments and answer the questions
posed throughout the activity. Students are encouraged to
work in pairs or even small groups.
2.1 Image capture
Despite the acceptance of digital cameras as commonplace
in everyday life, the activity’s first step of capturing a suit-
able image always generates much excitement amongst the
students. This image needs to be suitable for further pro-
cessing: it must be recognizable (not too blurred), and must
have a good contrast. This step particularly lends itself to
teamwork and joint efforts and the step is usually recorded
as a “team photo” of a “group hug”. One of the great ben-
efits of using a digital camera is that there is no wastage:
there is no film to be consumed or paid for, and students can
snap at each other for as long as they like, or for as long as
the activity facilitator will let them. Finally, the image they
decide to use must then be saved. Scion Image only allows
images of type BMP (Microsoft Bitmap) or TIFF (Tagged
Image File Format); see [11] for a good account of each. Af-
ter saving the image, students may either quit or minimize
1
This is available from http://www.scioncorp.com
338
the image capture software/webcam application as the rest
of the activity is done using Scion Image only.
2.2 Grayscale and Pixel values
The next step in the activity, is to open the saved image
using Scion Image. This image is usually in colour and so
one of the first tasks is the conversion of the image from
colour to grayscale.
The students are then asked to explore the image by run-
ning the cursor over it, and to track the resultant values in
the Scion Image window: see figure 1. (For illustrative pur-
poses an image of a bunch keys has been used throughout
this paper; however in a “Fun with Faces” activity this would
be typically a student’s self image.) The reported values are
that of the pixel under the student’s cursor. For the pur-
poses of this activity, a “pixel” is just one of the coloured
dots of which a digital image is made—see [4] for a more
precise definition. Students are able to discover that 0 cor-
responds to black, 255 to white, and that the value of the
pixel is a function of its intensity. Scion Image allows two
scales of pixel values: 0 for black to 255 for white (this is a
standard scale), and 0 for white to 255 for black. In figure 1,
the Value for the pixel at the cursor is given as 116.00(139).
The first figure of 116 represents the intensity with the stan-
dard scale; the second figure of 139 Scion Image’s alternative
scale. The facilitator then sets the challenge for students to
Figure 1: Scion Image “Info” window
find the lowest value both X and Y. Quickly, students realise
that lower values for both X and Y are achieved by placing
the mouse cursor in the top left corner of the screen, and
the highest values are in the bottom right. A comparison
is usually made to the Cartesian co-ordinates X and Y with
which students usually have experience.
2.3 Quantization and resolution
These are terms are not generally introduced to the stu-
dents; however they are important concepts in image pro-
cessing and display. Fundamentally, resolution refers to the
amount of pixels used to display the image; the more pixels,
the “smoother” the image will appear; the fewer pixels the
“blockier” the image will appear. This blockiness is some-
times called “pixelization”. Quantization refers to the num-
ber of available gray values. Again, the more values, the
better the image will appear; the fewer values will result in
a less natural looking image.
Students are then shown how to experiment setting var-
ious gray levels used to display an image, creating images
similar to those shown on the left in figure 2. By using less
and less grayscales for their image display, students see the
effects on the appearance of the image, and in particular the
appearance of “false contours” in the output.
 Quantization: 8 and 4 levels Changing resolution

Figure 2: Quantization and resolution

Allied to quantization is thresholding, where an image is matrix and image neighbourhood:

turned into black and white by the application of a simple
−1 −1 −1 10 10 20
rule: choose a particular gray value n, and for all pixels in
−1 8 −1 10 20 20
the image, those with values less than n become black, and
−1 −1 −1 10 20 30
those with values greater than or equal to n become white.
Thresholding is very useful in practice, but it can be diffi- the central value in this image neighbourhood, 20, is the
cult to find an appropriate threshold value which will display current pixel value. The computed output for this position
most of the required information. In Scion Image, thresh- when applying the filter is
olding is simply done by adjusting a slider bar, so that visual
inspection can find the best threshold value. An example is (10 × −1) + (10 × −1) + (20 × −1)
shown in figure 3. Adjusting the image resolution can be + (10 × −1) + (20 × 8) + (20 × −1)
+ (10 × −1) + (20 × −1) + (30 × −1) = 30.
In the “Fun with Faces” session, the facilitator can in-
troduce the idea that the students’ images are in need of
a “facial”! This mask or “facial” treatment, will blur their
images, and smooth away the wrinkles, or acne as the case
maybe. To do the “facial”, a mask or filter will need to be
applied. Students are asked to open NotePad, or any other
small text editor and simply type in the elements of a fil-
ter and by using the appropriate commands/mouse clicks in
Scion Image, this mask or filter can be applied to the im-
age. Examples of applications of blurring filters are shown
in figure 4. By experimentation, students discover that the

Figure 3: Thresholding

done simply by resizing the image twice: first reducing it

in size, and then increasing the result. When adjusting an
image size, Scion Image allows the option of using repeat-
ing pixels, which leads to the blocky effect alluded to above.
Results are shown on the right in figure 2.

2.4 Convolution and spatial filtering Figure 4: Blurring

Although formally defined to have different meanings, con-
volution and spatial filtering are terms that are used inter-
changeably; the principle involved is one of the most pow-
erful in image processing. Therefore, it is imperative that
these concepts are introduced in an easy to understand man-
ner in the “Fun with Faces” activity. For the reader, we
may consider a grayscale image as being a very large matrix
whose elements are the gray values of the pixels. To perform
a spatial filter, we first create a new small matrix M , of size
say 3 × 3 or 5 × 5. The matrix M is called the filter. For
every element in the image matrix, place the centre element
of M over this image element. Pairing of elements of M
with elements of the image, multiply all pairs of elements
together and add up these products. For the following filter
larger the filter, the greater the blurring.
Students are introduced to filters which have the effect of
isolating the edges of the image, or of sharpening the image
by enhancing the edges, including the Sobel filters, which
are designed to concentrate on edges in one direction only.
Examples of the application of these filters are shown in
figure 5.
2.5 Morphology
“Morphology” refers to a branch of image processing algo-
rithms which take as their starting point the size and shape
of objects in an image. For this activity, students experi-
ment with two basic operations: dilation, which enlarges or

339
 Edge detection Edge enhancement
Figure 5: Edge detection and edge enhancement
thickens objects in an image, and erosion, which shrinks or
thins them. The image on the far left in figure 6 shows a
binary object formed in Scion Image by taking a grayscale
image and thresholding the result.
The results of dilation and erosion are shown in figure 6.
Without going into any of the theory, students can see
that dilation really does thicken objects and erosion thins
them: the objects from the left image in figure 6 have been
thickened by dilation and thinned by erosion.
These two images can now be subtracted to produce an
edge map of the original image, as shown on the far right in
figure 6.
2.6 Noise
Noise, errors in an image, can be implemented by using
the spray can tool (this is available on a floating menu),
over a grayscale image. The removal of this “salt & pepper”
noise can be done with a median filter. This is a filter whose
output is the median of the pixels in the image neighbour-
hood. The affect is dramatic and figure 7 shows an example
of noise and its removal by this means.
Figure 7: Noise and its removal
Students see that the median filter does indeed do a very
good job of removing the noise. Students can experiment
using a larger neighbourhood (5×5 for example), or applying
the median filter more than once, to see how this affects
the noise removal. They can also experiment with adding
different amounts of noise: giving their image “a really good
spray”, to investigate how the outcome of the median filter
is affected by the amount of noise.
3. PEDAGOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS
While digital image processing is typically a graduate study,
the literature documents the use of digital image processing
as a valuable learning aide in diverse cases such as in med-
ical image processing training [5] and for the teaching of
two dimensional arrays in undergraduate computer science
340
Edges using Sobel filters
classes [2]. In these instances, the inclusion of digital image
processing was valued because it engaged students in active
experimentation and concrete real world examples. Such
inquiry-based activities encouraged students to ask “what
happens when I try this?”. As Neo and Neo [12] point out
active and contextual learning is the hallmark characteris-
tic of the constructivist model in education. In this model,
students learn by looking for patterns and significance in
their experiences and try to construct their own knowledge
by adding to what they already know [16].
Much educational research supports the notion that stu-
dents do learn according to the constructivist model [6] and
the use of inquiry based activities to encourage active learn-
ing as been advocated by many authors [6, 10]. Addition-
ally, computer-based technologies have been seen by oth-
ers [1, 15] as an important vehicle to achieve active engage-
ment amongst students whilst encouraging group participa-
tion and exploration of real world scenarios. When image
processing activities were introduced in a Cincinnati Pub-
lic School at 7th grade, Lewis reports [8] that the students
found the exercise fun and stimulating and also suggests that
the activity fostered a positive learning environment for a
broad variety of learners, including gifted students, minori-
ties and females. Similar experiences were also reported by
Raphael and Greenberg [14]. These views are supportive of
those advocating inquiry-based activities for improved sci-
ence and mathematics learning throughout the junior high
school curriculum [6] and also of our belief that an inquiry
based image processing exercise like “Fun with Faces” is both
appropriate and desirable for students at this level.
4. STUDENT FEEDBACK
We have deliberately avoided any pre-testing and post-
testing of participants, as we wanted the activity to be spon-
taneous. However, after each “Fun with Faces” session stu-
dents are invited to comment on this activity by filling out
an evaluation form. Without exception, all students agreed
that: the activity was worthwhile and enjoyable, the in-
structions were clear, there were plenty of opportunities to
ask questions. When asked: “What did you enjoy about to-
day and why?”, many students commented on this activity,
which was only one of several offered during the day, with
enthusiasm:
“The computer & image thingy was fabulous. I loved it.”
“Web camera work!”
“The session with the computers.”
“Last session—computers.”
“I enjoyed the computer science.”
“The computer stuff.”
 A binary image Dilation
Figure 6: Morphology
“Fun with photos [sic]!!”
The enthusiasm of the students in the laboratory was also
indicative of the fun they were having; this seems to be a
very successful activity, illustrating both computer science
and mathematics in a positive manner.
5. CONCLUSIONS
We have shown that although image processing—as an
area of academic study —is usually reserved for the upper
undergraduate years, it is perfectly reasonable to introduce
it in a simplified form much earlier. In the course of two
hours, students experiment with quantization and spatial
resolution, filtering with applications, noise and its removal,
and binary morphology. And they leave with a great sense
of mastery and satisfaction.
In comparison with previous studies, our activity is de-
signed as a single standalone session aimed at encouraging
students to broaden their views of the content and practice
of computer science, long before they select undergraduate
courses.
There is probably no reason why this activity—perhaps
in a further simplified form—could not be offered to high-
achieving upper primary level students. However, so far we
have restricted our attentions to students at secondary level.
6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge the detailed comments
of the referees, who made many valuable suggestions for im-
proving the original draft of this paper.
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