Version 6.0 (R2007b) Image Processing Toolbox :: Image Processing Toolbox Release Notes (Image Processing Toolbox™)

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Version 6.0 (R2007b) Image Processing Toolbox

This table summarizes what's new in Version 6.0 (R2007b).

New Features and Changes	Version Compatibility Considerations	Fixed Bugs and Known Problems	Related Documentation at Web Site
Yes Details below	Yes—Details labeled as Compatibility Considerations, below. See also Summary.	Bug Reports Includes fixes:	Printable Release Notes: PDF Current product documentation

New Features and Changes

Version Compatibility Considerations

Fixed Bugs and Known Problems

New Interactive Image Sequence and Video Viewer

The toolbox now supports a new interactive image sequence viewer, called the Movie Player (implay). Using the Movie Player you can:

Play a MATLAB movie, AVI file, or multidimensional array.
Step through a movie or sequence of images, frame-by-frame, or jump to the beginning or end of the sequence.
Examine a frame using the Pixel Region tool or export the frame to the Image Tool.

Image Tool Includes Cropping, Enhanced Contrast Adjustment, and Saving of Modified Images

The Image Tool (imtool) supports several enhancements:

You can now modify the image data after performing a contrast adjustment operation. Previously, contrast adjustment only affected the display of the image, not the actual image data. To modify image data, click Adjust Data in the Adjust Contrast tool.
You can now interactively crop an image displayed in the Image Tool using the Crop Image button in the toolbar (or select Crop Image from the Tools menu).
You can now save the image displayed in the image tool in any of several common image file formats. Select Save As from the Image Tool File menu.

New Function for Converting Bayer Pattern Encoded Images to RGB

The toolbox now supports a function, demosaic, that can convert a Bayer pattern encoded image into an RGB image.

A Bayer filter mosaic, or color filter array, refers to the arrangement of color filters that let each sensor in a single-sensor digital camera record only red, green, or blue data. The patterns emphasize the number of green sensors to mimic the human eye's greater sensitivity to green light. The demosaic function uses interpolation to convert the two-dimensional Bayer-encoded image into a truecolor image, in the RGB color space.

New Function for Creating a Multiresolution Gaussian Pyramid

The toolbox now supports a function, impyramid, that you can use to create a multiresolution Gaussian pyramid. If you specify the 'reduce' parameter, impyramid returns a low-pass filtered version of the image, half the size of the original image. If you specify the 'expand' parameter, impyramid returns a filtered image twice the size of the original image. impyramid uses convolution with a Gaussian filter kernel to produce the images.

Enhanced ROI Definition Behavior for `imcrop`, `roifill`, and `roipoly`

The imcrop, roifill, and roipoly functions now let you define an ROI and then adjust the size and position of the ROI interactively using the mouse. In previous releases, these functions supported the interactive definition of ROIs, but only gave you one chance at the definition. Now, when you are satisfied with the size and shape of the ROI, double-click to perform the cropping, filling, or mask creation operation.

Compatibility Consideration

In previous releases, when defining a polygonal ROI using roipoly, pressing Backspace deleted the most recent vertex you had defined in the polygon. With this release, pressing Backspace deletes the entire polygon. To delete an individual vertex, move the pointer over the vertex, right-click to view the vertex context menu, and then choose Delete Vertex.

New Modular Interactive GUI-building Tools

The set of modular interactive tools now includes functions to display a file chooser dialog box and write data to a file (imsave). The toolbox also includes a function (imputfile) that displays the file chooser dialog box and returns the user's selections.

New Programmable ROI Tools

The set of programmable ROI creation functions provided by the toolbox now includes three additional shapes:

Polygons (impoly)
Ellipses (imellipse)
Freehand shapes (imfreehand)

The toolbox already includes ROI creation functions to create points, lines, and rectangles.

Each of the ROI creation functions supports an API that you can use to control aspects of its behavior and appearance. For example, you can use API functions to specify the position of the ROI or retrieve the coordinates of its current position.

Support for Reading NITF and HDR Images

Read metadata from a National Imagery Transmission Format (NITF) file using nitfinfo.
Read an image from a NITF file using nitfread.
Read high dynamic range (HDR) images using hdrread.
Convert high dynamic range images into a format that can be displayed using the tonemap function.

Enhanced Performance

Enhanced performance for thinning and skeletonization using bwmorph.
Enhanced performance for filtering RGB images using imfilter.

DICOM Dictionary Upgrade

The default DICOM dictionary has been upgraded to the 2007 version released by NEMA. A text version of this dictionary is included in the product, dicom-dict.txt. This upgrade fixes a problem with the earlier version of the dictionary which contained two instances of the same tag, which caused warnings.

Compatibility Consideration

If your DICOM code depends on hard-coded old attribute names, you may see failures. In addition, some DICOM files may no longer parse. Customers who require attribute settings from the 2005 version can use the dicomdict function to access the old data dictionary, which we are shipping in R2007b. That is, dicom-dict.txt will have 2007 values and dicom-dict-2005.txt is the version of dicom-dict.txt found in R2006a and R2007a.

Changes to Other Functions

This release includes changes to the following functions.

Function	Description of Change
`imshow`	Is not supported when MATLAB is started with the `-nojvm` option.
`imhist`	Can now be embedded in custom GUIs.
`fanbeam`,`ifanbeam`,`fan2para`,`para2fan`	The fan-beam functions now return different answers than in previous releases due to a bug fix.
`imadjdemo`	This demo has been deleted from the toolbox.