Fundamental Steps in Digital Image Processing

Image Acquisition
This step is aim to obtain the digital image of the object

Image Enhancement
This step aims to improve the quality of the image so that analysis of the images is reliable

Image Segmentation
This step divides the image in to many sub regions and extracts the regions that are necessary for further analysis.
The portions of the image that are not necessary , such as image backgrounds are discarded

Feature Extraction and Object Description
Imaging applications use many routines for extraction of image features that are necessary for recognition. This is called image feature extraction step.
The extracted object features are represented in meaningful data structures and the objects are described

Pattern Recognition
This step is for identifying and recognizing the object that is present in the image , using features generated in the earlier step and pattern recognition algorithms such as classification or clustering.
Image data compression and image database are the other important steps in image processing