texture
A measure of the variation of the intensity of a
surface, quantifying properties such as smoothness, coarseness
and regularity. It's often used as a {region descriptor} in
{image analysis} and {computer vision}.
The three principal approaches used to describe texture are
statistical, structural and spectral. Statistical techniques
characterise texture by the statistical properties of the grey
levels of the points comprising a surface. Typically, these
properties are computed from the grey level {histogram} or
grey level {cooccurrence matrix} of the surface.
Structural techniques characterise texture as being composed
of simple primitives called "texels" (texture elements), that
are regularly arranged on a surface according to some rules.
These rules are formally defined by {grammar}s of various
types.
Spectral techiques are based on properties of the Fourier
spectrum and describe global periodicity of the grey levels of
a surface by identifying high energy peaks in the spectrum.
(1995-05-11)