Image Processing Programming Projects in an Upper Division Algorithms Course
Karen T. Sutherland · 2004
We introduced digital image processing into our upper division algorithms course three years ago. This course requires a heavy programming component. To satisfy that requirement, we often found ourselves assigning programming projects that consisted of writing code as a direct implementation of a given algorithm, essentially doing what had already been shown in the text. The students learned how to implement the algorithms, but they did not learn much about why they might find these algorithms useful in their careers as computer scientists. Our dissatisfaction with the existing practice, the fact that we were not taking advantage of the capabilities of the Java language and a desire to incorporate new topics into the course motivated our change. Our goal was to assign programming projects which required implementation of the algorithms studied while at the same time providing the students with interesting real world projects. This paper describes our motivation, the projects assigned and the results.