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A Hands-On, Interactive Undergraduate Digital Image Processing Course Abstract

This paper describes an experimental undergraduate digital image processing course created and taught by the author. The course was designed to be an interactive experience. The lecture material, hands-on examples, and in-class computer exercises were blended together to form a unique interactive learning experience. Lectures contained numerous MATLAB-based examples and students were required to experiment with short programs during the presentation. Each class period included a longer computer exercise designed to give students the opportunity to practice the material presented in the lecture. The computer exercises used MATLAB with its Digital Image Processing Toolbox. This paper describes the course in detail and offers practical advice and suggestions for future improvements.

Introduction

The field of image processing has grown tremendously in the last decade. Countless applications of digital image processing (DIP) from personal entertainment to medical and scientific discovery drive the need for graduates with experience in imaging. Multimedia industry, robotics, manufacturing, medicine, and remote sensing are only a few examples of specializations that demand students educated in image processing and computer vision1.

Nowadays, most image processing courses are taught at the graduate level. However, offering an elective image processing course during the junior or senior years of undergraduate studies has the potential to trigger students’ interest in a new and exciting field. It shows them the real world application of the many hours of engineering foundations and fundamentals they had to take during their freshman and sophomore years. Image processing is an excellent choice for their first elective course because results of the algorithms are readily available for visual inspection. Some students may lack the prerequisites to fully understand digital processing of two dimensional signals; however, with some effort from the instructor, the course can be structured to provide the required background. Alternatively, the instructor may choose to evaluate the general knowledge that the students have mastered by the time they are ready to take the image processing class and structure the course around that knowledge. This enables the undergraduate students to sample the world of engineering applications early on and hopefully excites them to pursue this topic in the future. The author has always been an advocate for bringing more real world applications into the early years of electrical engineering education to motivate students and increase the retention. Making image processing accessible and appealing to a wide range of students fits well with this philosophy.

Traditionally, image processing courses have been taught in the format of lectures followed by midterm and final examinations. In such courses, image processing is taught

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Miguel, A. (2006, June), A Hands On, Interactive Undergraduate Digital Image Processing Course Paper presented at 2006 Annual Conference & Exposition, Chicago, Illinois. 10.18260/1-2--1393