Date of Award

8-2001

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Geography

First Advisor

Dr. Charles Emerson

Second Advisor

Dr. Rolland Fraser

Third Advisor

Dr. David Dickason

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

Texture is defined as the visible cue suggesting the smoothness or coarseness associated with image tone or color (Emerson, 1999). Fractal dimension (D) offers insight towards understanding texture in the spatial as well as spectral context of an image (Mandelbrot, 1982). Fractal dimension is best understood as a range of values between two and three that are used to quantitatively describe a surface. (D) values near 2.0 represent a uniform area containing similar pixel values. In contrast, (D) values near 3.0 represent a domain that is spectrally complex. This complexity stems from light and dark pixels in close proximity to one another. The Triangular Prism Method (Clarke, 1986) was originally designed to compute a fractal dimension for an entire image. By applying a moving window to the triangular prism method, a local filter is created thus allowing grid images to be generated that are composed entirely of fractal dimensions. These images show recognizable areas that have high and low complexity. The results of this technique have shown that using the triangular prism method to compute the fractal dimension aids in characterizing the texture of an image.

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