An image may be defined as a two-dimensional function, where x and y are spatial (plane) coordinates, and the amplitude of f at any pair of coordinates (x, y) is called the intensity or gray level of the image at that point.
When x, y, and the intensity values of f are all finite, discrete quantities, we call the image a digital image. The field of digital image processing refers to processing digital images by means of a digital computer.
Note that a digital image is composed of a finite number of elements, each of which has a particular location and value. These elements are called picture elements, image elements, pels, and pixels
Images based on radiation from the EM spectrum are the most familiar, especially images in the X-ray and visual bands of the spectrum. Electromagnetic waves can be conceptualized as propagating sinusoidal waves of varying wavelengths, or they can be thought of as a stream of massless particles, each traveling in a wavelike pattern and moving at the speed of light
