Computer Imaging & Graphics

4.0 credits

This is NOT a computer vision class. Computer vision is concerned with understanding images, whereas in this class we are mostly concerned with how images are formed in the first place. In particular, we will study three fundamental forms of image formation: biological (human eye and retina), electrical (cameras), and computational (computer graphics). Why do we care about image formation? First, it's a wonderfully rich topic that covers sciences (e.g., physics, optics, visual neuroscience), engineering (e.g., camera/display design, Augmented/Virtual Reality glass design), computation (e.g., rendering algorithms, computational photography, image/video compression algorithms), art (e.g., paintings, pentimento), and mathematics (e.g., linear systems, Fourier analysis). Second, understanding image formation allows us to better design vision systems (both computer vision and human vision) — if we don't understand how an image is formed in the first place, how can we analyze it to extract useful information?