INTRODUCTION TO FOURIER TRANSFORMS FOR IMAGE PROCESSING BASIS

FUNCTIONS
First we will investigate the "basis" functions for the Fourier Transform (FT). The FT tries to
represent all images as a summation of cosine-like images. Therefore images that are pure
cosines have particularly simple FTs.

This shows 2 images with their Fourier Transforms directly underneath. The images are a
pure horizontal cosine of 8 cycles and a pure vertical cosine of 32 cycles. Notice that the FT
for each just has a single component, represented by 2 bright spots symmetrically placed
about the center of the FT image. The center of the image is the origin of the frequency
coordinate system. The u-axis runs left to right through the center and represents the
horizontal component of frequency. The v-axis runs bottom to top through the center and
represents the vertical component of frequency. In both cases there is a dot at the center that
represents the (0,0) frequency term or average value of the image. Images usually have a
large average value (like 128) and lots of low frequency information so FT images usually
have a bright blob of components near the center. Notice that high frequencies in the vertical
direction will cause bright dots away from the center in the vertical direction. And that high
frequencies in the horizontal direction will cause bright dots away from the center in the
horizontal direction.

Here are 2 images of more general Fourier components. They are images of 2D cosines with
both horizontal and vertical components. The one on the left has 4 cycles horizontally and 16
cycles vertically. The one on the right has 32 cycles horizontally and 2 cycles vertically.
(Note: You see a gray band when the function goes through gray = 128 which happens
twice/cycle.) You may begin to notice there is a lot of symmetry. For all REAL (as opposed to
IMAGINARY or COMPLEX) images, the FT is symmetrical about the origin so the 1st and
3rd quadrants are the same and the 2nd and 4th quadrants are the same. If the image is
symmetrical about the x-axis (as the cosine images are) 4-fold symmetry results.
MAGNITUDE VS. PHASE:
Briefly, the MAGNITUDE tells "how much" of a certain frequency component is present and
the PHASE tells "where" the frequency component is in the image. To illustrate this consider
the following.

Note that the FT images we look at are just the MAGNITUDE images. The images displayed
are horizontal cosines of 8 cycles, differing only by the fact that one is shifted laterally from
the other by 1/2 cycle (or by PI in phase). Note that both have the same FT MAGNITUDE
image. The PHASE images would be different, of course. We generally do not display
PHASE images because most people who see them shortly thereafter succumb to
hallucinations or end up in a Tibetan monastery. Nevertheless, it is wise to remember that
when one looks at a common FT image and thinks about "high" frequency power and "low"
frequency power, this is only the MAGNITUDE part of the FT.
By the way, you may have heard of the FFT and wondered if was different from the FT. FFT
stands for "Fast" Fourier Transform and is simply a fast algorithm for computing the Fourier
Transform.
ROTATION AND EDGE EFFECTS:
In general, rotation of the image results in equivalent rotation of its FT. To see that this is
true, we will take the FT of a simple cosine and also the FT of a rotated version of the same
function. The results can be seen by:

At first, the results seem rather surprising. The horizontal cosine has its normal, very simple
FT. But the rotated cosine seems to have an FT that is much more complicated, with strong
diagonal components, and also strong "plus sign" shaped horizontal and vertical
components. The question is, where did these horizontal and vertical components come
from? The answer is that the FT always treats an image as if it were part of a periodically
replicated array of identical images extending horizontally and vertically to infinity. And there
are strong edge effects between the neighbors of such a periodic array as can be seen by:

Thus, what we see as the FT in the "slant" image (lower right of the image before last) is
actually the combination of the actual FT of the cosine function and that caused by the edge
effects of looking at a finite part of the image. These edge effects can be significantly
reduced by "windowing" the image with a function that slowly tapers off to a medium gray at
the edge. The result can be seen by:

The windowed image is shown in the upper left. Its FT is shown in the lower left. The nonwindowed FT is shown in the upper right and the actual, true FT of a cosine is shown in the
lower right. These images are all scaled differently and the comparison is only qualitative, but
it can be seen that the windowed image FT is much closer to the true FT and eliminates
many of the edge effects.
SOME IMAGE TRANSFORMS:
Now, with the above introduction, the best way to become familiar with Fourier Transforms is
to see lots of images and lots of their FTs. First, an interesting pair of images, one sharp and
clear, and the other blurred and noisy.

There are 2 images, goofy and the degraded goofy, with FTs below each. Notice that both
suffer from edge effects as evidenced by the strong vertical line through the center. The
major effect to notice is that in the transform of the degraded goofy the high frequencies in
the horizontal direction have been significantly attenuated. This is due to the fact that the
degraded image was formed by smoothing only in the horizontal direction. Also, if you look
carefully you can see that the degraded goofy has a slightly larger background noise level at
high frequencies. This is difficult to see and perhaps not even meaningful because the
images are scaled differently, but if really there, it is due to the random noise added to the

degraded goofy. Notice also that it is difficult to make much sense out of the low frequency
information. This is typical of real life images.
The next images show the effects of edges in images:

Notice the strong periodic component, especially in the vertical direction for the bricks image.
Horizontal components appear closer together in the FT. In the blocks image, notice a bright
line going to high frequencies perpendicular to the strong edges in the image. Anytime an
image has a strong-contrast, sharp edge the gray values must change very rapidly. It takes
lots of high frequency power to follow such an edge so there is usually such a line in its
magnitude spectrum.
Now lets look at a bunch of different shapes and their FTs.

Notice that the letters have quite different FTs, especially at the lower frequencies. The FTs
also tend to have bright lines that are perpendicular to lines in the original letter. If the letter
has circular segments, then so does the FT.
Now lets look at some collections of similar objects:

Notice the concentric ring structure in the FT of the white pellets image. It is due to each
individual pellet. That is, if we took the FT of just one pellet, we would still get this pattern.
Remember, we are looking only at the magnitude spectrum. The fact that there are many
pellets and information about exactly where each one is is contained mostly in the phase.
The coffee beans have less symmetry and are more variably colored so they do not show the
same ring structure. You may be able to detect a faint "halo" in the coffee FT. What do you
think this is from?

Here are our first truly general images. Notice there is very little structure. You can see a top
left to bottom right slanting line in the girl image FT. It is probably due to the edge between
her hat and her hair. There are also some small edge effects in both images. The mandril
image appears to have more high frequency power, probably due to the hair.

The seafan image has a lot of little holes that are about the same size and somewhat
randomly oriented. The size of the holes is about 2 pixels wide so that corresponds to
frequency components about 1/2 way out to the maximum. The strong horizontal
components in the lake image is probably due to the tree trunk edges.
SOME FILTERS:

The left side of the image we have seen before. In the lower right, notice how sharply the
high frequencies are cut off by the "ideal" lowpass filter. Notice also that not very much
power is being thrown away beyond the circle that is cut off. In the upper right, the
reconstructed image is obviously blurrier due to the loss of high frequencies. Overall contrast
is still pretty good due to that fact that not too much power was thrown away. Notice also that
there are obvious "ringing" artifacts in the reconstructed image. This is due to the very sharp
cutoff of the "ideal" filter.
Now we will do a highpass filter.

Notice in the lower right that this filter does not cut off sharply at the 50% point as the
lowpass did. However, the center bright spot, which accounts for most of the power in the
image, is clearly gone. The image in the upper right, which looks totally black, in fact is not
totally black. This highpass filter has preserved the image information where there are very
rapid changes in gray level.
Such a process is frequently what is desired in an edge detector. However, it is not an
improvement in the image. There are 2 problems. First, it is too dark. This can be fixed by
rescaling or re-contrast- stretching the image after filtering. This is commonly done and is
easy. Second, and harder, is the fact that too much of the low frequency tonal information is
gone. Image sharpening requires a "sharpening" filter or high frequency emphasis filter. This
kind of filter preserves some of the low frequency information but relatively boosts the higher
frequencies. Fourier coefficients of frequency-distance 0 from the origin will be multiplied by
0.5. As you go away from the origin or zero frequency, the multiplier will be interploated
between 0.5 and 4.0. From then outward, the multiplier will be 4.0. So higher frequency
coefficients are multiplied by values greater than 1.0 and lower frequency coefficients are
multiplied by values less thatn 1.0. The overall net effect on the image power is that it is
unchanged. The above values are in a file called "filter_coeffs".
To see the result:

Notice the relative brightness at high frequencies in the lower right image. Which upper
image is sharper? Which upper image looks better? Portraits are one of the few
contradictions to the general principal that sharper is better.
Filtering can also be used to reduce noise. It is particularly effective when the noise is
confined to just a few frequencies:

The image on the upper left is goofy with a superimposed cosine added to it, representing
noise. In the lower left, notice the strong cosine "dots" just to the left and right of the origin. In
the lower right, these "dots" have been removed ( I actually did it with the "trace" capability in
dym ). The resulting magnitude file is then used with the "filter" command to filter the Fourier
coefficients. The file of coefficients is then inverse FT'd to get the upper right image. The
cosine "noise" is gone.
Life is not always this easy as is shown in the next example:

In this case, a grid has been placed over goofy. The lower left shows the resulting FT. Notice
that the grid is quite sharp so it has lots of high frequencies so its impact on the frequency
domain is very spread out