image processing (general topic)

IMAGE PROCESSING -PRESENTATION OF IMAGES FOR THE BLIND -”A VISION FOR THE BLIND’”

BYK.PARKAVI

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING,JEPPIAAR ENGINEERING COLLEGE,CHENNAI-119.

LOUIS BRAILLE

This explains about how to present natural colour photographs or scenes to the blind.

In this method original photograhs or scenes are taken into computer’s memory through image scanner or video camera as digital images.

They are image processed and translated intotactile images on braille paper,which are easy tounderstand for the blind.

How can the blind recognize the contents of photographs or scenes?

original images are broken down into simple images to represent one or more attributes.

These simple images would be easier to understand by tactile sensation for the blind.

To implement this process, image-processes would be effective.

Let us see how to develop a prototype system and to find out an effective way for image presentation for the blind.

INPUT DEVICE: Image scanner(CANON PIXEL JET),video Camera.

MAIN PROCESSOR: Indy personal computer(PC)

OUTPUT DEVICE: Braille printer plotter(New ESA721),imagePrinter(CANON PIXEL JET).

A System for image processing

External appearance of indy PC and PIXEL JET

We applied the following standard image-processes

to original images to Translate them into simple tactile images :

Crop/add margin

Negation

Colour to gray scale conversion

Edge detection

Thresholding

Image editing

Rotation

Scale

Flip flop

The difference of effective resolution between image screen and Braille Printer plotter is very large as shown below:

1.The resolution of original image horizontal :<1280 vertical:<1024

2.The resolution of the Braille printer plotter. plotter step size is about 0.34mm,so the resolution is as follows: 793*600 for 10”11inch Braille paper 726*480 for 8”10inch Braille paper

3.The effective resolution of Braille image for 8*10inch Braille paper

horizontal:145-242 vertical:96-160

Following slides will depict the process of image-processing for :

Face

Maple leaves

Brain’S CT

Japanese characters

The original is a scene captured by video camera. And it is image-processed. It to pick out the face’s outline and produced a simple tactile profile of the face

The original is a digital colour image on indy PC. Edge detection process was inserted before the thresholding process in face to represent the texture on maple leaves, and the other processes are the same as face.

The original is a gray scale picture of brain’s CT. It was inputted through image scanner.

The original is a color brochure.

It was inputted through image scanner.

We discussed how to present tactile images to the blind and found a prototype system to create and present easy tactile images to the blind.

All though these tactile images are too rough to distinguishthe details of original photographs they are supposed to beeasy to catch the points of original image by tactile sensation.

Only a few important attributes of the image are reserved tactile without the extra complicated information.

We would be able to make a number of tactile images that present different attributes from an original image.

From these facts, we can say that the blind is able to understand the photographs or scenes by tactile sensation with help of image processes on computer.

In this paper,we only pointed out and showed the effectiveness of image processing method on creating tactile images.

BUT WE ARE NOW TRYING TO IMPLEMENT A SYSTEM IN WHICH ABLIND CAN EASILY IMAGE-PROCESS ORIGINAL IMAGES AND UNDERSTAND THEM AS TACTILE IMAGES BY THEIR OWN EFFORTIN THEIR FIATURE.

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