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Image Acquisition Methods

Summer Term 2014

Image Acquisition Methods

Lecturer: Pascal Peter

Examiner: Prof. Dr. Joachim Weickert

Summer Term 2014

Lecture (2h) with exercises (2h)
6 credit points

Lectures: Friday 14-16 c.t., Building E1.3, Lecture Hall 003
First lecture: Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Tutor: Mohamed Omran
Tutorials: Tuesday 8-10 c.t., Building E1.3, Lecture Hall 003
Office Hour: Thursday 15-17 c.t., Building E1.4, Room 609
First tutorial: Tuesday, April 29, 2014



AnnouncementsDescriptionEntrance requirementsContents
ExamsLecture notes/AssignmentsReferences



You can find your result of the second exam here.
General statistics about this exam can be downloaded here.

Each student who has participated in the second written exam has the opportunity to inspect his/her graded solutions in room 4.10 in Bldg. E1.7 on Wednestday, October 15th, 2014 in the following timeslots, depending on your last (family) name:
A - K : 15:00 pm - 16:00 pm
L - Z : 16:00 pm - 17:00 pm

You can find your result of the first exam here.
General statistics about this exam can be downloaded here.

Please check here if you are admitted to the exam.

Registration for this lecture was open from Monday, April 14, 2014 (6 pm) until Friday, April 25, 2014 (6 pm).
Keep in mind that depending on your course of studies, you also have to register via the HISPOS system of the Saarland University. HISPOS registration was possible early during the semester. If you are not yet registered, contact the responsible examination office.

The course is designed as a supplement for image processing lectures, to be attended before, after or parallel to them. In order to choose the right image processing methods for a given image, it is important to know what the image data represents and what specific properties it possesses.

Therefore, in this lecture, participants learn:

  • what digital images are,
  • how they are acquired,
  • what they encode and what they mean,
  • which limitations are introduced by image acquisition.

A broad selection of different acquisition methods is featured in this lecture and should enable participants to deal with image data from many different fields.


Basic mathematics courses are recommended.
The lecture will be given in English.


A broad variety of image acquisition methods is described, including imaging by virtually all sorts of electromagnetic waves, acoustic imaging, magnetic resonance imaging and more. While medical imaging methods play an important role, the overview is not limited to them.

Starting from physical foundations, description of each image acquisition method extends via aspects of technical realisation to mathematical modelling and representation of the data.


The first written exam will take place on Friday, July 25, 2014 from 2:00 to 4:00 pm in Building E1.3, Lecture Hall 002 and Building E2.2, Günter Hotz Lecture Theatre.
The second written exam will take place on Monday, October 6, 2014 from 2:00 to 4:00 pm in Building E2.2, Günter Hotz Lecture Theatre.
These are closed book exams. You can participate in both exams, and the better grades counts. Please note that the actual exam takes 90 minutes, the rest of the time is used to avoid interference with other exams.

Please remember that you have to register online for the exam in the HISPOS system of the Saarland University.

If you cannot attend the exam, contact Pascal Peter as early as possible. In case you have proof that you cannot take part for medical reasons or you have another exam on the same day, we can offer you an oral exam as a replacement. Note that we need written proof (e.g. a certificate from a physician/Krankenschein) for the exact date of the exam.

Please check here whether you are admitted to the written exam. If you think that there is an error, please contact Pascal Peter immediately.

Here is the distribution of places by family name (i.e. surname, last name) for the second exam that takes place on Monday, October 6, 2014 from 2:00 to 4:00 pm:

Students A - Z: Günter Hotz Lecture Theatre in Building E2.2

These are the rules during the exams:

  • No lecture materials are admitted during the exam.
  • Pocket calculators are not allowed.
  • Mobile phones, PDAs, laptops and other electronic devices have to be turned off.
  • Please keep your student ID card ready for an attendance check during the exam.
  • Solutions that are written with pencil will not be graded.
  • You are not allowed to take the exam sheets with you.
  • You must stay until the exam is completely over.

Lecture notes / Assignments

Participants will be able to download course materials (lecture notes, assignments) here. For all assignments, example solutions will be provided. Additional organisational information, examples and explanations that may be relevant for your understanding and the exam are provided in the lectures and tutorials. It is solely your responsibility - not ours - to make sure that you receive this infomation.
The table below contains the planned topics for the lecture.

PART I: FOUNDATIONS

No. Title Date Script Slides
1 Introduction and Basic Concepts I 15/04 [download] [download]
2 Basic Concepts II 25/04 [download] [download]


PART I: FOUNDATIONS

No. Title Date Script Slides
3 Imaging by Visible Light I: Electromagnetic Spectrum 02/05 [download] [download]
4 Imaging by Visible Light II: Optics, Sensorics, Photography 09/05 [download] [download]
5 Imaging by Visible Light III: Colour Spaces, Telescopes, Mirrors, Microscopy 17/05 [download] [download]
6 Imaging by Visible Light IV: Dual Photography, Triangulation, Holography 23/05 [download] [download]
7 X-Ray and Gamma-Ray Imaging in 2-D 30/05 [download] [download]
8 Radioastronomy, Radar, Terahertz Radiation, Microwave and Radio Wave Imaging 06/06 [download] [download]
9 Computerised X-Ray Tomography I: Transmission Tomography, Reconstruction, Scanners 13/06 [download] [download]
10 Computerised X-Ray Tomography II: Visualisation, Artefacts, Noise, Emission Tomography 20/06 [download] [download]
11 Magnetic Resonance Imaging I 27/06 [download] [download]
12 Magnetic Resonance Imaging II 04/07 [download] [download]
13 Electron Microscopy 11/07 [download] [download]
14 Acoustic Waves, Sonar, Ultrasound 18/07 [download] [download]


Assignments are published in the week before the tutorial takes place. It is not necessary to hand in the exercises and they will not be graded. All exercises are intended to be solved and discussed during the tutorial session. For formal exercises a written solution is also offered online.

No. Assignments Date Solutions
1 Tutorial 1: Quantisation and Sampling 29/04 Solution 1
2 Tutorial 2: Polarisation, Rotor
and Maxwell's Equations
06/05 Solution 2
3 Tutorial 3: Real vs. Virtual Images,
Snell's Law and Dispersion
13/05 Solution 3
4 Tutorial 4: Mirror Optics, Fresnel Equations, Brewster's Angle, Total Reflection 20/05 Solution 4
5 Tutorial 5: Colour Distances, Illumination Changes, Triangulation 27/05 Solution 5
6 Tutorial 6: Beer's Law, Contrast, Detector Noise
(Optional Hint Sheet)
03/06 Solution 6
7 Tutorial 7: Time of Flight, Effective Half-Life
(Optional Hint Sheet)
10/07 Solution 7
8 Tutorial 8: Computer Tomography and Radon Transform
(Optional Hint Sheet)
17/06 Solution 8
9 Tutorial 9: Gaussian and Poisson Noise
(Optional Hint Sheet)
24/06 Solution 9
10 Tutorial 10: CT Scans and Sampling, Tensor Visualisation
(Optional Hint Sheet)
01/07 Solution 10
11 Tutorial 11: Opportunity for questions about tutorial solutions. 08/07
12 Tutorial 12: Test Exam. 15/07 Solution

  • B. Jähne, H. Haußecker, P. Geißler, editors, Handbook of Computer Vision and its Applications. Volume 1: Sensors and Imaging. Academic Press, San Diego 1999.
  • S. Webb, The Physics of Medical Imaging. Institute of Physics Publishing, Bristol 1988.
  • C. L. Epstein, Introduction to the Mathematics of Medical Imaging. Pearson, Upper Saddle River 2003.
  • R. Blahut, Theory of Remote Image Formation. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
  • A. C. Kak, M. Slaney, Principles of Computerized Tomographic Imaging. SIAM, Philadelphia 2001.
  • Articles from journals and conferences.

Further references will be given during the lecture.



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