Since it was first released, MATLAB has been associated with technical computing and scientific programming. Due to its high uptake in academia and its large and active community, it has grown to become a versatile and multifunctional tool, providing solutions in a vast diversity of fields. Its usage in image and video processing for scientific applications has been popular for a while, but more recent versions have included processing tools that are more user-friendly and aimed at a broader spectrum of users. The usefulness of MATLAB for image processing is rather self-explanatory, since it is a programming environment specialized for matrix manipulation and images are nothing more than matrices.

In this chapter, you will be introduced to the very basics of image manipulation using MATLAB. Prior experience in using MATLAB is not required, since we will be covering everything from scratch. Some basic understanding of programming would be beneficial.

More specifically, in this chapter we will cover:

So, let's get started.