texture

n 1: the feel of a surface or a fabric; "the wall had a smooth

texture"

2: the essential quality of something; "the texture of

Neapolitan life"

3: the musical pattern created by parts being played or sung

together; "then another melodic line is added to the

texture"

4: (fine arts) the characteristic appearance of a surface

having a tactile quality

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)