texture

graphics A measure of the variation of the intensity of a

surface, quantifying properties such as smoothness, coarseness

and regularity. It's often used as a region descriptor in

image analysis and computer vision.

The three principal approaches used to describe texture are

statistical, structural and spectral. Statistical techniques

characterise texture by the statistical properties of the grey

levels of the points comprising a surface. Typically, these

properties are computed from the grey level histogram or

grey level cooccurrence matrix of the surface.

Structural techniques characterise texture as being composed

of simple primitives called "texels" (texture elements), that

are regularly arranged on a surface according to some rules.

These rules are formally defined by grammars of various

types.

Spectral techiques are based on properties of the Fourier

spectrum and describe global periodicity of the grey levels of

a surface by identifying high energy peaks in the spectrum.

(1995-05-11)