According to the characteristics of digital image processing course, this paper proposes a teaching schema, where the teaching process is consist of three stages, i.e., theory analysis through the demonstration of the phenomenon from engineering application examples, the design and implementation of processing algorithm and applying image processing algorithms in engineering practice. Through practices, it is shown that this teaching schema not only can improves studying interest in the course, but also can help students to apply the knowledge to practical projects, and thereby both application and development capability of students are greatly improved.