torture

n 1: extreme mental distress [syn: {anguish}, {torment}]

2: unbearable physical pain [syn: {torment}]

3: intense feelings of suffering; acute mental or physical

pain; "an agony of doubt"; "the torments of the damned"

[syn: {agony}, {torment}]

4: the act of distorting something so it seems to mean

something it was not intended to mean [syn: {distortion},

{overrefinement}, {straining}, {twisting}]

5: the act of torturing someone [syn: {torturing}]

v 1: torment emotionally or mentally [syn: {torment}, {excruciate},

{rack}]

2: subject to torture [syn: {excruciate}, {torment}]

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)