image recognition

graphics, artificial intelligence The identification of

objects in an image. This process would probably start with

image processing techniques such as noise removal,

followed by (low-level) feature extraction to locate lines,

regions and possibly areas with certain textures.

The clever bit is to interpret collections of these shapes as

single objects, e.g. cars on a road, boxes on a conveyor belt

or cancerous cells on a microscope slide. One reason this is

an AI problem is that an object can appear very different

when viewed from different angles or under different lighting.

Another problem is deciding what features belong to what

object and which are background or shadows etc. The human

visual system performs these tasks mostly unconsciously but a

computer requires skillful programming and lots of processing

power to approach human performance.

(1997-07-20)