Real World Computer Vision Applications

Syllabus content
Unit 1: Role of Computer Vision in AI
Relation between computer vision and AI
 Computer vision overview
 Task in computer vision
 Image processing
 Image recognition
 Object detection
 Object Segmentation
 Computer Vision in Health
 Computer vision in retail
 Computer vision in energy
 Computer vision in oil and gas
 Computer vision in automobile
 Open Cv
 TensorFlow
 CUDA
 Viso Suite
 Matlab
 Keras
 SimpleCV
 BoofCV
 Deepface
 Yolo

Computer vision overview

Computer vision is a field of artificial intelligence (AI) where programs aim to identify objects in
digitized images or videos, allowing computers to “see.” It involves using machine learning and neural
networks to extract meaningful information from visual inputs and make recommendations or take actions
based on what they observe. Essentially, if AI enables computers to think, computer vision enables them to
see, observe, and understand the visual world around them.
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In practical terms, computer vision works similarly to human vision, but with a shorter learning curve.
While humans have a lifetime of context to learn how to differentiate objects, estimate distances, and detect
anomalies in images, computer vision systems achieve this using cameras, data, and algorithms. These
systems can analyze thousands of products or processes per minute, surpassing human capabilities in
identifying imperceptible defects or issues

The key technologies behind computer vision include:

1. Deep Learning: A type of machine learning that enables computers to learn from vast amounts of
visual data.
2. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs): These networks break down images into pixels, assign
tags or labels, and use convolutions to make predictions about what they “see.” Through iterations,
CNNs recognize images like human perception

Computer vision is a fascinating field within Artificial Intelligence (AI) that enables computers to see,
recognize patterns, and analyze visual data from images and videos. It leverages Machine
Learning and Deep Learning techniques to process visual information in ways similar to how humans
perceive the world.

Here are some real-world applications of computer vision across various industries:

1. Facial Recognition: Widely used for security, access control, and authentication systems.
2. Object Detection and Tracking: Helps identify and track objects in real-time, essential for
surveillance, robotics, and autonomous vehicles.
3. Autonomous Vehicles: Computer vision plays a crucial role in self-driving cars, enabling them to
perceive their surroundings and make decisions.
4. Medical Imaging: Used for diagnosing diseases, detecting anomalies, and assisting doctors in
interpreting medical images.
5. Augmented Reality: Enhances user experiences by overlaying digital information on the real world.
6. Quality Control and Inspection: In manufacturing, it ensures product quality, detects defects, and
automates inspection processes.
7. Sports Analytics: Analyzing player movements, ball trajectories, and game statistics for better
performance and strategy.
8. Agriculture: Helps monitor crop health, detect pests, and optimize farming practices.
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Applications of Computer Vision
 Medical Imaging: Computer vision helps in MRI reconstruction, automatic pathology,
diagnosis, and computer aided surgeries and more.
 AR/VR: Object occlusion, outside-in tracking, and inside-out tracking for virtual and
augmented reality.
 Smartphones: All the photo filters (including animation filters on social media), QR code
scanners, panorama construction, Computational photography, face detectors, image detectors
like (Google Lens, Night Sight) that we use are computer vision applications.
 Internet: Image search, Mapping, photo captioning, Ariel imaging for maps, video
categorization and more.

Relation between computer vision and AI

Computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) are closely intertwined, with computer vision being a
specialized branch of AI. Let’s explore their relationship:
1. Definition:
o Computer Vision: It’s a field within AI that focuses on teaching computers to “see” and
understand visual data from images and videos. Computer vision systems use machine
learning and neural networks to extract meaningful information from visual inputs.
o AI: A broader field that encompasses various techniques and technologies to enable machines
to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as reasoning, problem-
solving, and decision-making.
2. Interdependence:
o AI and Computer Vision: Computer vision is a subset of AI. AI provides the foundational
concepts, algorithms, and tools that computer vision relies on. Without AI, computer vision
wouldn’t exist.
o AI Models in Computer Vision: AI models (such as neural networks) play a crucial role in
computer vision. They learn from labeled and unlabeled visual data, enabling computers to
recognize patterns, objects, and anomalies.
3. Applications:
o Computer Vision Applications: Computer vision is used in facial recognition, object
detection, autonomous vehicles, medical imaging, quality control, and more.
o AI Applications Beyond Vision: AI extends beyond vision to natural language processing,
robotics, recommendation systems, and game playing (e.g., AlphaGo).
4. Synergy:
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o AI Enhances Computer Vision: AI models enhance computer vision’s capabilities by
enabling faster learning, better feature extraction, and improved accuracy.
o Computer Vision Enhances AI: Visual data enriches AI models. For example, image
recognition can enhance chatbots or virtual assistants.

Task in computer vision

What are computer vision tasks?
Computers can use images and videos to learn and perform tasks using a set of techniques and algorithms.
These techniques and algorithms help them understand the visual info by picking out important details
from pictures and videos. There are many different computer vision tasks and let us discuss in detail the
most common computer vision tasks and their applications in different fields.
Image Classification
One of the main responsibilities of computer vision is image classification. The primary goal is to assign a
predefined label or category to an input image by identifying the main content of the specific image. The
computer system predicts which class or category the main image content belongs to. Image classification
mainly deals with a single object. For example, an image classification model could be trained to identify
and label an image, if the image contains a cat, a dog, a car, a human or a specific object.
Explained below are different types of image classification, and how image classification works.
Types of Image Classification:
There are two main types of image classification for categorizing images into predefined classes:
 Single-Label Classification: In single-label classification, each image is assigned to one single
category, where the goal is to predict one label per image. For example, classifying an image as
containing a cat or a dog.
 Multi-Label Classification: Multiple-Label classification involves assigning multiple labels to
an image which has multiple objects. For example, an image might contain a cat, a dog and a
tree and the image classification recognizes all these objects and labels them.

Object Detection
Object detection is a computer vision technique that identifies and locates objects in images or videos. It
involves analyzing the image or video, pre-processing it, extracting features, classifying the image regions,
and determining bounding boxes for each object. The bounding boxes allow us to see where the objects are
in the scene and how they move through it.
Object detection is different from image classification, which focuses on categorizing entire images into
predefined classes. Object detection is also different from object localization, which aims to locate the main
or most visible object in an image.
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Object detection algorithms typically use machine learning or deep learning to produce results. It can be
used in many areas of computer vision, including image retrieval, video surveillance, face detection, and
pedestrian detection.

One of the significant function in computer vision is Object detection. The main purpose of object
detection is to identify and locate specific objects in the provided input sources like digital images or
videos. Few examples for object detection are locating a pedestrian in a street or a car in a road traffic.
There is a two-part process namely object localization and object classification which combines to make
the object detection process.
 Object Localization: Object Localization means locating objects. Here we detect or identify the
objects by pinpointing their specific location within an image or video. The object detection in
Computer Vision tasks use bounding box to mark the object locations in an image or tracking a
moving object in a video.
 Object Classification: Once we know where the objects are, we move on to object
classification. This means putting each object into a pre-defined category like ‘human’, ‘car’,
or ‘animal’.

Image Segmentation
Image Segmentation is an crucial task in computer vision for dividing an image into meaningful segments
or regions. The divided segments can correspond to individual objects, parts of objects or regions with
similar characteristics. This image segmentation process can break down an image into meaningful
building blocks to help computer to identify and understand the content.
The main goal of image segmentation is to divide an image into distinct segments or regions which are
related to meaningful objects, regions or even individual pixels.
There are 2 main types of image segmentation:
 Semantic Segmentation: Semantic segmentation in computer vision involves assigning a class
label to each individual pixel in an image. Each pixel in an image is categorized and assigned a
label based on the object it belongs. When an semantic segmentation is done on an image the
output is a ‘segmentation map’ where each pixel’s color represents its class.
 Instance Segmentation: Instance segmentation delves into the image at a more granular level
by identifying and delineating each individual instance of those objects. It is something like, as
an example of, having different coloured cats in an image. Another good example could be,
imagine a group photo of students. Semantic segmentation labels everyone as ‘person’, and
instance segmentation would identify and outline each individual person in the group photo.
There is also another segmentation type called Panoptic Segmentation which combines both semantic
and instance segmentation to provide a complete understanding of every pixel in the image.
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Face and Person Recognition

Facial recognition and person recognition share a close connection. Both are interconnected technologies
in computer vision used to identify individuals. The recognition process depends on machine learning
algorithms like convolutional neural networks (CNNs). These play a crucial role in accurately and
efficiently extracting features and classifying faces.
Facial recognition focuses the facial identities and features to identify an individual person. The facial
recognition is done by comparing an individual person’s image or video frame to a dataset of known faces
labelled.
Person recognition is aimed at identifying people by extending beyond face by including the entire body,
body shape and activities like gait, posture, clothing, and other personal attributes.

Edge Detection
Edge detection is one of the image process techniques in computer vision tasks to identify the boundaries
between objects or different regions in an image. Edge detection works by highlighting areas in an image
which is identified by the significant change in intensity or colour. By identifying edges in an image using
edge detection method, computer vision systems can locate objects within an image and recognize them
based on their shapes or structures which helps to divide an image into meaningful segments or region of
individual objects. Edge detection is used in feature detection or image classification and used in
application such as autonomous vehicles and medical image analysis.

Image Restoration
Image restoration task in computer vision is a technical process, which helps to reconstruct or recover old
and damaged, faded or corrupted images to a clearer and more visually appealing version by improving
the image quality. This process involves removing noise, blur, scratches and other damages or
imperfections and restore back to their original clarity and details.
Image restoration process is highly useful in fields like Digital Photography, Medical Imaging, Forensic
Science and Satellite Imagery to enhance and improve visual quality of images.

Feature Matching
Feature matching process in computer vision is used to find corresponding, similar, identical features or
points from one image to across multiple images. The feature matching is performed by using techniques
like nearest neighbour search by finding the closest descriptor in one image to the descriptor in another
image.
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Feature matching is applied for object recognition, image stitching, 3D construction of a scene, motion
tracking and in augmented reality. Using feature matching, computer vision systems can establish
relationship between images for understanding and analysing visual data.

Scene Reconstruction
Scene reconstruction process in computer vision helps in creating a 3D model of a real-world scene. It is
like creating a virtual replica of a room using multiple images taken of the room. Scene reconstruction
process is very useful for capturing, analysing and manipulation the physical world in a digital format.
One of the real-world applications would be Crime Scene reconstruction which helps to understand how
the crime unfolded and to identify the potential suspects. Other use cases include Virtual Reality,
Augmented Reality, Autonomous Navigation and Film & Video Production.
There are two main reconstruction techniques used as below:
 Traditional Techniques: The traditional techniques generally rely on geometric principles and
computer vision algorithms. The Structure from Motion (SfM) technique is the most reliable
one in traditional method. The SfM is often combined with triangulation to compute 3D points
from corresponding image features.
 Deep Learning Techniques: With the popular use of deep learning methods, Convolutional
Neural Networks (CNNs) play a key role in image reconstruction tasks. The CNNs can learn to
directly predict and capture complext patterns and structures from single images.

Video Motion Analysis

Video motion analysis in computer vision is a technique used in the process of detecting, tracking and
interpretation of motion patterns in video sequences. This helps to analyse and understand the motion
patterns of objects in a video sequence.

IMAGE PROCESSING:

Digital Image Processing means processing digital image by means of a digital computer. We can also say
that it is a use of computer algorithms, in order to get enhanced image either to extract some useful
information.
Digital image processing is the use of algorithms and mathematical models to process and analyze digital
images. The goal of digital image processing is to enhance the quality of images, extract meaningful
information from images, and automate image-based tasks.
Image processing mainly include the following steps:
1.Importing the image via image acquisition tools;
2.Analysing and manipulating the image;
3.Output in which result can be altered image or a report which is based on analysing that image.
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What is an image?
An image is defined as a two-dimensional function,F(x,y), where x and y are spatial coordinates, and the
amplitude of F at any pair of coordinates (x,y) is called the intensity of that image at that point. When x,y,
and amplitude values of F are finite, we call it a digital image.
In other words, an image can be defined by a two-dimensional array specifically arranged in rows and
columns.
Digital Image is composed of a finite number of elements, each of which elements have a particular value
at a particular location.These elements are referred to as picture elements,image elements,and
pixels.A Pixel is most widely used to denote the elements of a Digital Image.
Types of an image
1. BINARY IMAGE– The binary image as its name suggests, contain only two pixel elements i.e
0 & 1,where 0 refers to black and 1 refers to white. This image is also known as Monochrome.
2. BLACK AND WHITE IMAGE– The image which consist of only black and white color is
called BLACK AND WHITE IMAGE.
3. 8 bit COLOR FORMAT– It is the most famous image format.It has 256 different shades of
colors in it and commonly known as Grayscale Image. In this format, 0 stands for Black, and
255 stands for white, and 127 stands for gray.
4. 16 bit COLOR FORMAT– It is a color image format. It has 65,536 different colors in it.It is
also known as High Color Format. In this format the distribution of color is not as same as
Grayscale image.
A 16 bit format is actually divided into three further formats which are Red, Green and Blue. That famous
RGB format.

Fundamental Image Processing Steps

Image Acquisition
Image acquisition is the first step in image processing. This step is also known as preprocessing in image
processing. It involves retrieving the image from a source, usually a hardware-based source.

Image Enhancement
Image enhancement is the process of bringing out and highlighting certain features of interest in an image
that has been obscured. This can involve changing the brightness, contrast, etc.

Image Restoration
Image restoration is the process of improving the appearance of an image. However, unlike image
enhancement, image restoration is done using certain mathematical or probabilistic models.

Color Image Processing

Color image processing includes a number of color modeling techniques in a digital domain. This step has
gained prominence due to the significant use of digital images over the internet.
 Real World Computer Vision Applications
Wavelets and Multiresolution Processing
Wavelets are used to represent images in various degrees of resolution. The images are subdivided into
wavelets or smaller regions for data compression and for pyramidal representation.

Compression
Compression is a process used to reduce the storage required to save an image or the bandwidth required to
transmit it. This is done particularly when the image is for use on the Internet.

Morphological Processing
Morphological processing is a set of processing operations for morphing images based on their shapes.

Segmentation
Segmentation is one of the most difficult steps of image processing. It involves partitioning an image into its
constituent parts or objects.

Recognition
Recognition assigns a label to an object based on its description.

Example of Image Processing using OpenCV

This example shows the Python code for reading an image in one format − showing it in a window and writing
the same image in other format. Consider the steps shown below −

Import the OpenCV package as shown −

import cv2

Now, for reading a particular image, use the imread() function −

image = cv2.imread('image_flower.jpg')

For showing the image, use the imshow() function. The name of the window in which you can see the image
would be image_flower.

cv2.imshow('image_flower',image)
cv2.destroyAllwindows()
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Now, we can write the same image into the other format, say .png by using the imwrite() function −

cv2.imwrite('image_flower.png',image)

The output True means that the image has been successfully written as .png file also in the same folder.

What is Image Recognition?

Image recognition is a machine learning technology that allows computers to interpret and understand visual
information from images or videos. It uses algorithms and models to identify and categorize objects, people,
text, and actions within images and videos based on patterns and learned data. Image recognition can
convert images into numerical or symbolic information, allowing computers to make sense of the world in
ways similar to human vision.

Image recognition is a subset of computer vision, which is a broader field of artificial intelligence (AI). AI
can be highly effective in using image recognition technology. For example, AI can search for images on
social media platforms and compare them to datasets to determine which ones are important in image
search.

Image recognition has many applications, including:

 Security: Facial recognition technology is used in mobile phones for commercial purposes and in
Apple's Face ID to unlock iPhones.

 Fraudulent accounts: Image recognition algorithms can help protect against online fraud.

 Medical imaging: Image recognition can be used to diagnose diseases.

 Defect detection: Image recognition can be used to detect defects in products.

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 Retail: Image recognition can be used to analyze facings, detect out of stocks, measure shelf share,
and planogram compliance

Image recognition is a fascinating application of computer vision. It involves training machines

to interpret and understand visual content within images and videos. Here’s what you need to know:
1. Definition:
o Image recognition is the process by which machines identify and classify specific objects,
people, text, and actions within digital images and videos.
o Essentially, it’s the ability of computer software to “see” and interpret things within visual
media, much like how a human would perceive them.
2. How It Works:
o Deep Learning: Image recognition relies on deep learning techniques, including neural
networks and convolutional layers.
o Patterns and Objects: Algorithms and models are designed to identify and categorize
images based on patterns and objects present in them.
3. Real-World Applications:
o Defect Detection: Used in manufacturing to spot defects or irregularities in products.
o Medical Imaging: Enhances diagnostic accuracy by detecting anomalies in X-rays, MRIs,
etc.
o Security Surveillance: Identifies faces, license plates, and suspicious activities.
o Autonomous Vehicles: Helps self-driving cars recognize objects and navigate safely.
o Content Moderation: Filters inappropriate content in social media and online platforms.
o Label Matching: Used in the beverage industry for accurate label matching.
o Image Tracking: Monitors where and how images appear online.
o Image Verification: Helps verify the authenticity of images and ensures compliance with
copyright.

In summary, image recognition plays a pivotal role in various industries and technologies, making our visual
world more accessible to machines.

Object Detection vs Object Recognition vs Image Segmentation

Object Recognition:
Object recognition is the technique of identifying the object present in images and videos. It is one of the
most important applications of machine learning and deep learning. The goal of this field is to teach
machines to understand (recognize) the content of an image just like humans do.
 Real World Computer Vision Applications

Object Recognition

Object Recognition Using Machine Learning

 HOG (Histogram of oriented Gradients) feature Extractor and SVM (Support Vector
Machine) model: Before the era of deep learning, it was a state-of-the-art method for object
detection. It takes histogram descriptors of both positive ( images that contain objects) and
negative (images that does not contain objects) samples and trains our SVM model on that.
 Bag of features model: Just like bag of words considers document as an orderless collection of
words, this approach also represents an image as an orderless collection of image features.
Examples of this are SIFT, MSER, etc.
 Viola-Jones algorithm: This algorithm is widely used for face detection in the image or real-
time. It performs Haar-like feature extraction from the image. This generates a large number of
features. These features are then passed into a boosting classifier. This generates a cascade of the
boosted classifier to perform image detection. An image needs to pass to each of the classifiers to
generate a positive (face found) result. The advantage of Viola-Jones is that it has a detection
time of 2 fps which can be used in a real-time face recognition system.

Object Recognition Using Deep Learning

Convolution Neural Network (CNN) is one of the most popular ways of doing object recognition. It is
widely used and most state-of-the-art neural networks used this method for various object recognition
related tasks such as image classification. This CNN network takes an image as input and outputs the
probability of the different classes. If the object present in the image then it’s output probability is high else
the output probability of the rest of classes is either negligible or low. The advantage of Deep learning is that
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we don’t need to do feature extraction from data as compared to machine learning.

Challenges of Object Recognition:

 Since we take the output generated by last (fully connected) layer of the CNN model is a single
class label. So, a simple CNN approach will not work if more than one class labels are present in
the image.
 If we want to localize the presence of an object in the bounding box, we need to try a different
approach that not only outputs the class label but also outputs the bounding box locations.

Fig: Overview of tasks related to Object Recognition

Image Classification :
In Image classification, it takes an image as an input and outputs the classification label of that image with
some metric (probability, loss, accuracy, etc). For Example: An image of a cat can be classified as a class
label “cat” or an image of Dog can be classified as a class label “dog” with some probability.
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Image Classification

Object Localization: This algorithm locates the presence of an object in the image and represents it with a
bounding box. It takes an image as input and outputs the location of the bounding box in the form of
(position, height, and width).
Object Detection:
Object Detection algorithms act as a combination of image classification and object localization. It takes an
image as input and produces one or more bounding boxes with the class label attached to each bounding
box. These algorithms are capable enough to deal with multi-class classification and localization as well as
to deal with the objects with multiple occurrences.
Challenges of Object Detection:
 In object detection, the bounding boxes are always rectangular. So, it does not help with
determining the shape of objects if the object contains the curvature part.
 Object detection cannot accurately estimate some measurements such as the area of an object,
perimeter of an object from image.

Difference between classification. Localization and Detection (Source: Link)

Image Segmentation:
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Image segmentation is a further extension of object detection in which we mark the presence of an object
through pixel-wise masks generated for each object in the image. This technique is more granular than
bounding box generation because this can helps us in determining the shape of each object present in the
image because instead of drawing bounding boxes , segmentation helps to figure out pixels that are making
that object. This granularity helps us in various fields such as medical image processing, satellite imaging,
etc. There are many image segmentation approaches proposed recently. One of the most popular is Mask R-
CNN proposed by K He et al. in 2017.

Object Detection vs Segmentation (Source: Link)

There are primarily two types of segmentation:

 Instance Segmentation: Multiple instances of same class are separate segments i.e. objects of
same class are treated as different. Therefore, all the objects are coloured with different colour
even if they belong to same class.
 Semantic Segmentation: All objects of same class form a single classification ,therefore , all
objects of same class are coloured by same colour.

Semantic vs Instance Segmentation (Source: Link)

Applications:
The above-discussed object recognition techniques can be utilized in many fields such as:

 Driver-less Cars: Object Recognition is used for detecting road signs, other vehicles, etc.
 Medical Image Processing: Object Recognition and Image Processing techniques can help
detect disease more accurately. Image segmentation helps to detect the shape of the defect
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present in the body . For Example, Google AI for breast cancer detection detects more accurately
than doctors.
 Surveillance and Security: such as Face Recognition, Object Tracking, Activity Recognition,
etc.

Computer Vision AI Applications

Computer vision is a subfield of AI (Artificial Intelligence), which enables machines to derive some
meaningful information from any image, video, or other visual input and perform the required action on
that information. Computer vision is like eyes for an AI system, which means if AI enables the machine to
think, computer vision enables the machines to see and observe the visual inputs. Computer vision
technology is based on the concept of teaching computers to process an image or a visual input at pixels and
derive meaningful information from it. Nowadays, Computer vision is in great demand and used in different
areas, including robotics, manufacturing, healthcare, etc.

Computer Vision in Healthcare

Computer vision in the context of healthcare is a rapidly advancing technology that has the potential
to transform medical practices. Let’s explore its significance and applications:
1. Definition and Basics:
o Computer vision (CV) is a branch of artificial intelligence (AI) that focuses on image and
video understanding.
o It involves tasks such as object detection, image classification, and segmentation.
o CV algorithms leverage powerful AI models and optical sensors to process visual data from
medical images and videos.
2. Applications in Healthcare:
o Medical Imaging: CV aids in diagnostic imaging by detecting anomalies, tumors, and
diseases in X-rays, MRIs, and other scans.
o Second Opinions: Deep-learning systems offer second opinions to physicians by flagging
concerning areas in medical images.
o Dermatology: CV assists in skin lesion classification and early detection of skin conditions.
o Radiology: It enhances the interpretation of radiological images, improving accuracy and
efficiency.
o Pathology: CV helps pathologists analyze tissue samples and identify patterns associated
with diseases.
o Operating Rooms: Real-time CV can assist surgeons during procedures by overlaying
relevant information on their field of view.
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o Patient Safety: CV systems can monitor patient movements, prevent falls, and ensure safety
protocols.
o Drug Discovery: Analyzing cellular images for drug development and research.
o Health Monitoring: Wearable devices with CV capabilities can track vital signs and detect
health issues.
o Telemedicine: CV enables remote diagnosis and monitoring through visual data.
3. Deep Learning Impact:
o Deep learning, a subfield of machine learning, has revolutionized CV.
o Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) achieve human-level performance in image
classification.
o Representation Learning: Deep learning models learn complex features directly from raw
data.
4. Privacy and Security:
o CV solutions must meet privacy requirements to protect patient data.
o Edge AI (on-device processing) ensures privacy-preserving computations.

Computer Vision in Retail

Computer vision revolutionizes the retail industry by enabling retailers to gather valuable insights,
streamline operations, and enhance customer satisfaction. Here are some key applications of computer
vision in retail:
1. Retail Heat Maps:
o Task: Creating visual heat maps of customer movement within stores.
o Application: Helps retailers optimize store layouts, product placement, and identify high-
traffic areas1.
2. Cashierless Stores:
o Task: Enabling automated checkout without traditional cashiers.
o Application: Amazon Go stores use computer vision to track items picked by customers and
charge their accounts automatically1.
3. Image Recognition in Retail:
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o Task: Identifying specific objects, logos, or brands within images.
o Application: Used for inventory management, brand monitoring, and visual search in e-
commerce1.
4. Virtual Mirrors and Recommendation Engines:
o Task: Creating virtual fitting rooms and suggesting personalized products.
o Application: Enhances the shopping experience by allowing customers to virtually try on
clothes and accessories1.
5. Footfall Analysis, Pass-By Traffic, and Interactions:
o Task: Analyzing customer foot traffic patterns and interactions.
o Application: Helps retailers optimize staffing, store layouts, and promotional displays1.
6. In-Store Advertisement:
o Task: Tailoring advertisements based on real-time customer demographics.
o Application: Improves ad targeting and engagement within physical stores

Computer vision in energy

Computer vision is a field of computer science that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and image processing to
help computers understand and identify objects and people in images and videos. In the energy industry,
computer vision can help improve safety, operational efficiency, and reliability. Here are some ways
computer vision can be used in the energy industry:

 Power grids

Computer vision can monitor power grids for potential issues by analyzing data from drones, sensors,
and satellite imagery. It can detect vegetation encroachment on power lines, identify areas with high
transmission losses, and pinpoint equipment hotspots. This information can help energy companies
improve efficiency, optimize grid operations, and reduce system losses.

 Energy consumption

Computer vision can analyze patterns to identify inefficiencies and provide actionable insights.

 Renewable energy systems

Computer vision can analyze weather patterns, cloud cover, and solar panel conditions.

 Environmental monitoring and conservation

Computer vision can identify and track wildlife, monitor air and water quality, and detect
environmental changes.

 Critical infrastructure
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Computer vision can monitor critical infrastructure, such as power plants, using cameras and vision
systems to help detect possible failures or anomalies early.

 Analog controls recognition

Computer vision can recognize and digitize analog controls to detect switch position, pointer position
in analog dials, signal lights, or liquid surface position of transformer oil. This can help automate
substation meter readings without human intervention, which can help detect abnormalities and warn of
equipment faults.

Computer vision in oil and gas

Computer vision can be used in the oil and gas industry to address health, safety, and environmental (HSE)
concerns, as well as to improve operational efficiency. Some examples of computer vision applications
include:

 Safety

Identifying hazards, monitoring personal protective equipment, and preventing and detecting fires

 Asset monitoring

Detecting anomalies in equipment and assets in real-time to predict maintenance needs

 Environmental compliance

Monitoring for leaks, emissions, and spills

 Operational efficiency
Identifying opportunities to optimize processes, reduce downtime, and improve productivity

Computer vision in automobile

Computer vision plays a pivotal role in the automotive industry, transforming the way vehicles operate,
ensuring safety, and enhancing overall driving experiences. Let’s explore its applications:
1. Autonomous Driving:
o Task: Enabling vehicles to navigate without human intervention.
o Application: Computer vision analyzes real-time data from cameras, LIDAR, and radar
sensors to detect objects (such as pedestrians, vehicles, and road signs), assess road
conditions, and make informed decisions1.
2. Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS):
o Task: Enhancing driver safety and comfort.
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o Application: Computer vision assists with features like lane departure warning, adaptive
cruise control, and collision avoidance. It monitors driver behavior and alerts them when
necessary.
3. Object Detection and Recognition:
o Task: Identifying and classifying objects on the road.
o Application: Detecting pedestrians, cyclists, other vehicles, and obstacles. It’s crucial for
both autonomous and human-driven vehicles3.
4. Traffic Sign Recognition:
o Task: Identifying and interpreting road signs.
o Application: Helps drivers stay informed about speed limits, stop signs, and other traffic
regulations.
5. Pedestrian Detection:
o Task: Spotting pedestrians near the vehicle.
o Application: Prevents collisions and ensures pedestrian safety, especially in urban
environments.
6. Lane Keeping and Lane Departure Warning:
o Task: Monitoring lane boundaries and preventing unintentional lane departures.
o Application: Alerts drivers when they drift out of their lane.
7. Parking Assistance:
o Task: Assisting drivers during parking maneuvers.
o Application: Computer vision helps with parking space detection, parallel parking, and
avoiding obstacles.
8. Interior Monitoring:
o Task: Monitoring driver and passenger behavior.
o Application: Detects drowsiness, distraction, or unsafe actions. It can adjust airbags and seat
belts accordingly.
9. Quality Control in Manufacturing:
o Task: Inspecting vehicle components during production.
o Application: Ensures quality by identifying defects, scratches, or misalignments.
10. Connected Vehicles:
o Task: Enabling communication between vehicles and infrastructure.
o Application: Computer vision assists with vehicle-to-vehicle (VV) and vehicle-to-
infrastructure (VI) communication for traffic management and safety

What is a computer vision library?

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A computer vision library is basically a set of pre-written code and data that is used to build or optimize a
computer program. The computer vision libraries are numerous and tailored to specific needs or
programming languages.

Popular computer vision libraries

In addition to the top 15 computer vision books, we've gathered a list of the most popular computer vision
libraries in this article to help you get started. Without further ado, let's dive in.

 OpenCV
 Scikit-Image
 Pillow (PIL Fork)
 TorchVision
 MMCV
 TensorFlow
 Keras
 MATLAB
 NVIDIA CUDA-XKerKeras
 NVIDIA Performance Primitives
 OpenVINO
 PyTorch
 Hugging Face
 Albumentations
 Caffe
 Detectron2

1. OpenCV

OpenCV is the oldest and by far the most popular open-source computer vision library, which aims at real-
time vision. It's a cross-platform library supporting Windows, Linux, Android, and macOS and can be used
in different languages, such as Python, Java, C++, etc. OpenCV has a Python Wrapper and uses the CUDA
model for GPU. Originally developed by Intel, it is now free to use under the open-source BSD license. It
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also contains some models that can be converted into TensorFlow models. A few use cases of OpenCV
include:

 2D and 3D feature toolkits

 Facial recognition application
 Gesture recognition
 Motion understanding
 Human-computer interaction
 Object detection
 Segmentation and recognition

2. Scikit-Image

Scikit-Image is considered to be the most convenient and natural Python library which is an “extension” of
Scikit-Learn. It is one of the most commonly used tools for supervised and unsupervised machine learning.
Scikit-Learn is a Python package that is used for image processing and operating natively NumPy arrays as
image objects. As it is Naturally Python and uses the Scikit-cuda module, Scikit-Image is free of charge and
restrictions. To properly use Scikit-Learn, you just need to pip install it and you're good to go. Its use cases
are a variety of:

 Finding exoplanets
 Data classification, identification, and recognition
 Clustering similar data into datasets
 Detecting fraud in credit card transactions
 Interoperability with other libraries
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3. Pillow (PIL Fork)

Next on our computer vision library list is Pillow, the friendly PIL fork by Jeffrey A. Clark (Alex) and
contributors, an open-source library for the Python programming language. It can be utilized by Windows,
Mac OS X, and Linux. The Python Imaging Library provides image processing capabilities to the Python
interpreter and its image library is modified for fast data access. It can be used in both C and Python
languages and it has a Python Wrapper. Mostly used for reading and saving images of different formats,
Pillow also comprises different basic image transformations such as rotation, merging, scaling, etc. Once
again, for its usage, you just need to pip install it. The use cases of Pillow are:

 Fast access to stored data

 Saving various image file formats.
 Extensive file format support
 Internal representation
 Image processing capabilities.

4. TorchVision

As an extension of a PyTorch library, TorchVision contains the most common image transformations for
computer vision. It also contains datasets and model architectures for computer vision neural networks. One
of the main goals of TorchVision is to provide a natural way of using computer vision image
transformations with PyTorch models without converting them into a NumPy array and back. Its package
comprises common datasets, model architectures, and regular computer vision image transformations.
TorchVision is Naturally Python and it can be used for Python and C++ languages. You can use it with the
PyTorch library by pip install.
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5. MMCV

MMCV is a type of PyTorch extension that provides image/video processing and transformations, image
and annotation visualization, and also many CNN architectures. It supports systems such as Linux,
Windows, and macOS, and it is one of the most beneficial toolkits for computer vision researchers. It is used
for Python, C++, and CUDA and it has a Python Wrapper. You can either pip or mim install it and use it in
your jupyter notebook. Some of MMCV's use cases are:

 Universal IO APIs
 Useful utilities (a timer, progress bar, etc)
 PyTorch runner with a hooking mechanism

6. TensorFlow

Created by the GoogleBrain team, TensorFlow was released in November 2015 and aimed at facilitating the
process of building AI models. It has customized solutions such as TensorFlow.js, a JavaScript library for
training and deploying models in the browser and on Node.js, or TensorFlow Lite, a lightweight library for
deploying models on mobile and embedded devices. TensorFlow has now come up with a better
framework, TensorFlow Hub. It's an easy-to-use platform where you can do the following:

 Reuse trained models like BERT and Faster R-CNN.

 Find ready-to-deploy models for your AI project.
 Host your models for others to use.
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7. Keras

Keras is a Python-based open-source software library that's especially useful for beginners because it allows
building neural network models quickly and provides backend support. It is a toolbox of modular building
blocks that computer vision engineers can leverage to quickly assemble production-grade, state-of-the-art
training, and inference pipelines. With over 400,000 individual users, Keras has strong community support.
It uses TensorFlow and you can pip install it. A few use cases of Keras include:

 Image segmentation and classification

 Handwriting recognition
 3D image classification
 Semantic image clustering

8. MATLAB

MATLAB is short for Matrix Laboratory and it is a paid programming platform that fits various applications
such as machine learning, deep learning, image, video, and signal processing. Users can buy a MATLAB
License and install it on your own PC. It comes with a computer vision toolbox that has multiple functions,
apps, and algorithms to help with computer vision-related tasks, such as:

 Detecting and tracking objects in video frames

 Recognizing objects
 Calibrating cameras
 Performing stereo vision
 Processing 3D point loads
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9. NVIDIA CUDA-X

When it was first introduced, CUDA was an acronym for Compute Unified Device Architecture, but
NVIDIA later dropped the common use of the acronym. NVIDIA CUDA-X is the updated version of
CUDA. It is a collection of GPU-accelerated libraries and tools to get started with a new application or GPA
acceleration. NVIDIA CUDA-X contains:

 Math Libraries
 Parallel Algorithms
 Image and Video Libraries
 Communication Libraries
 Deep Learning

10. NVIDIA Performance Primitives

The NVIDIA Performance Primitives (NPP) library provides GPU-accelerated image, video, and signal
processing functions that perform much faster than CPU-only implementations. This library is designed for
engineers, scientists, and researchers working in a range of fields such as computer vision, industrial
inspection, robotics, medical imaging, telecommunications, deep learning, and more. The NPP library comes
with 5000+ primitives for image and signal processing to perform the following tasks:

 Color conversion
 Image compression
 Filtering, thresholding
 Image manipulation
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11. OpenVINO

OpenVINO stands for Open Visual Inference and Neural Network Optimization. It's a set of comprehensive
computer vision tools for optimizing applications emulating human vision. To use OpenVINO, you'll need a
pre-trained model, given that it's a model optimizing and deployment toolkit. Developed by Intel, it is a free-
to-use cross-platform framework with models for several tasks:

 Object detection
 Face recognition
 Colorization
 Movement recognition

12. PyTorch

PyTorch is an open-source machine learning library for Python developed mainly by Facebook's AI research
group. It uses dynamic computation, which allows greater flexibility in building complex architectures.
Pytorch uses core Python concepts like classes, structures, and conditional loops and is compatible with
C++. You need to pip install timm and you will be all set. PyTorch supports both CPU and GPU
computations and is useful for:

 Image estimation models

 Image segmentation
 Image classification
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13. Hugging Face

Founded in 2016, Hugging Face was initially a chatbot company that later became an open-source provider
of NLP technologies. It is regarded as a big and powerful resource that contains different neural network
architectures and pre-trained models. To install Hugging Face, you can pip install datasets. Hugging Face
offers many models through its many tools including Hugging Face Hub, diffusers, transformers, etc. Its
most common use cases are:

 Sequence classification
 Question answering
 Language modeling
 Translation

14. Albumentations

Albumentations is an open-source Python library that provides a large range of image augmentation
algorithms. It's free under MIT license and is hosted on github. The library is a part of the PyTorch
ecosystem, and it's easily integrable with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch and Keras.
Albumentations supports a wide variety of image transform operations for tasks such as:

 Classification
 Semantic segmentation
 Instance segmentation
 Object detection
 Pose estimation
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15. Caffe

CAFFE stands for Convolutional Architecture for Fast Feature Embedding. It's an easy-to-use open-source
deep learning and computer vision framework developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It is
written in C++ and supports multiple languages and several deep-learning architectures related to image
classification and segmentation. Caffe is used in academic research projects, startup prototypes, and even
large-scale industrial applications in vision, speech, and multimedia. Caffe supports:

 Image segmentation
 Image classification
 CNN
 RCNN
 LSTM

16. Detectron2

Detecrton2 is a PyTorch-based modular object detection library by Facebook AI Research (FAIR). It was
built to meet the Facebook AI demand and cover the object detection use cases at Facebook. Detectron2 is a
refined version of Detection; it includes all the models of the original Detectron, such as Faster R-CNN,
Mask R-CNN, RetinaNet, and DensePose. It also features several new models, including Cascade R-CNN,
Panoptic FPN, and TensorMask. Detecrton2 is a great fit for:

 Dense pose prediction

 Panoptic segmentation
 Synaptic segmentation
 Object detection

SAM (Segment Anything Model) is the next generation state-of-the Facebook AI Research algorithm that
provides high-quality image segmentation. Both Detectron2 and SAM were implemented by using PyTorch.
Despite the many shortcomings of SAM, We at SuperAnnotate are enhancing its quality, scalability, and
speed with our tool. To learn more about it, we invite you to join our upcoming webinar and see how it
looks.
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