RGB2X

Introducing Image Processing Using Microsoft Excel

Despite Microsoft Excel's large data handling and graphing capabilities, it was not considered as a regular software for digital image processing and analysis until recently. A project focused on exploring this potential led to the development of a maiden version software application called RGBExcel built using MATLAB. The simple graphical user interface application extracts RGB image data from image files of any file size and of multiple formats, and exports to Excel for processing.

Efforts to further develop the software application resulted in an improved version called RGB2X. Examples of advantages of this new version over the initial version include multiple file handling, reduced number of clicks required to export the RGB data to Excel for each set of files selected. Other advantages include Excel files saved in the same location with the same base names as the original image files and additional worksheet expanding the data analysis capabilities.?

Following data extraction into Excel, different procedures for accomplishing typical image processing operations can be done in Excel. Image processing operations performed using Excel fall into the categories of image preprocessing, image enhancement, image classification, and time series analysis.

Benefits of Using Microsoft Excel

1. Its widespread usage and availability present a good opportunity for use as a teaching tool for image data processing. 

2. It also lends itself well as a useful research tool that can benefit a wide range of potential users with little knowledge of computer programming.