Kernel
The kernel is a small mask used to apply filters to an image. These masks have the shape of a square matrix, which is why they are also called convolution matrices.
Let’s consider matrix A, which represents the matrix containing the grey values of all the pixels in the original image, and matrix B representing the kernel matrix. Now let’s superimpose matrix B to matrix A, so that the centre of matrix B corresponds to the pixel of matrix A to be processed.
The value of the target image (matrix C) is calculated as the sum of all the elements of the matrix resulting from the Hadamard product between matrices A and B.
Example:
By applying a 3x3 blur filter
1/9 |
1/9 |
1/9 |
1/9 |
1/9 |
1/9 |
1/9 |
1/9 |
1/9 |
we can obtain this result:
Particularly useful kernels are derivative filters. Let’s analyse two Sobel filters:
1 |
0 |
-1 |
2 |
0 |
-2 |
1 |
0 |
-1 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
-1 |
-2 |
-1 |
These two filters represent, respectively, the derivatives (gradients) along abscissas Gx and along ordinates Gy of the image. If one calculates an additional matrix that represents the gradient module:
Clearly, this process represents the preliminary step to extract the edges of the image.