Scilab and SIP for Image Processing
This provides a free alternative to Matlab for image processing, but it is incremental as it focuses on tool demonstration rather than new methods.
The paper presents an overview of using Scilab and its Image Processing Toolbox (SIP) for image processing, demonstrating capabilities such as reading and writing images in over 100 formats and performing tasks like filtering and segmentation, with three practical examples to illustrate ease of use.
This paper is an overview of Image Processing and Analysis using Scilab, a free prototyping environment for numerical calculations similar to Matlab. We demonstrate the capabilities of SIP -- the Scilab Image Processing Toolbox -- which extends Scilab with many functions to read and write images in over 100 major file formats, including PNG, JPEG, BMP, and TIFF. It also provides routines for image filtering, edge detection, blurring, segmentation, shape analysis, and image recognition. Basic directions to install Scilab and SIP are given, and also a mini-tutorial on Scilab. Three practical examples of image analysis are presented, in increasing degrees of complexity, showing how advanced image analysis techniques seems uncomplicated in this environment.