The GLCM Tutorial Home Page
Click on a link below to connect directly with the main sections in this tutorial.
The "NEXT" button at the bottom of the page takes you through the tutorial in sequence.
What is texture? The GLCM Texture Calculations Exercises Examples Equations List
Statement on peer review and citation:
Although this tutorial is not published by a professional journal, it has undergone extensive peer review by third-party reviewers at the request of the author. In addition, many users have discovered computational errors and pointed out areas of improvement that have gone into subsequent versions of the tutorial in a Wiki-like process without the software. When citing, please give the current version and its date.
Current Version: 2.10 February 2007 Last update: 21 February 2007
Copyright 2002, 2007 Mryka Hall-Beyer
Permission is granted to use and reproduce this tutorial or sections of it free of charge for educational purposes only, and provided that credit is given.
Please e-mail any broken links, comments or corrections to mhallbey@ucalgary.ca
Introduction
Grey-Level Co-occurrence Matrix texture measurements have been the workhorse of image texture since they were proposed by Haralick in the 1970s. To many image analysts, they are a button you push in the software that yields a band whose use improves classification - or not. The original works are necessarily condensed and mathematical, making the process difficult to understand for the student or front-line image analyst. This GLCM texture tutorial was developed to help such people, and it has been used extensively world-wide since 1999.
How to use this tutorial
This document concerns some of the most commonly used texture measures, those derived from the Grey Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM). The essence is understanding the calculations and how to do them. This involves
- Defining a Grey Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM)
- Creating a GLCM
- Using it to calculate texture in the exercises.
- Understanding how calculations are used to build up a texture image
- Viewing examples of the texture images created with various input parameters
There are exercises to perform. When you are done, click
the answer link to see the answer and calculations.
Sections in brown italics contain supplementary information that is not
necessary to understand texture but may interest you.
Last update: 21 February 2007