Humans still obtain the vast majority of their sensory input through their visual system, and an enormous effort has been made to artificially enhance this sense. Eyeglasses, binoculars, telescopes, radar, infrared sensors, and photomultipliers all function to improve our view of the world and the universe. We even have telescopes in orbit (eyes outside the atmosphere) and many of those ‘‘see’’ in other spectra: infrared, ultraviolet, X-rays. These give us views that we could not have imagined only a few years ago, and in colors that we’ll never see with the naked eye. The computer has been essential for creating the incredible images we’ve all seen from these devices.

When the first edition of this book was written, the Hubble Space Telescope was in orbit and producing images at a great rate. It and the European Hipparcos telescope were the only optical instruments above the atmosphere. Now there is COROT, Kepler, MOST (Canada’s space telescope), and Swift Gamma Ray Burst Explorer. In addition, there is the Spitzer (infrared), Chandra (X-ray), GALEX (ultraviolet), and a score of others. The first edition was written on a 450-Mhz Pentium III with 256 MB of memory. In 1999, the first major digital SLR camera was placed on the market: the Nikon D1. It had only 2.74 million pixels and cost just under $6,000. A typical PC disk drive held 100–200 MB. Webcams existed in 1997, but they were expensive and low-resolution. Persons using computer images needed to have a special image acquisition card and a relatively expensive camera to conduct their work, generally amounting to $1–2,000 worth of equipment. The technology of personal computers and image acquisition has changed a lot since then.

A cookbook of algorithms for common image processing applications

Thanks to advances in computer hardware and software, algorithms have been developed that support sophisticated image processing without requiring an extensive background in mathematics. This bestselling book has been fully updated with the newest of these, including 2D vision methods in content-based searches and the use of graphics cards as image processing computational aids. It’s an ideal reference for software engineers and developers, advanced programmers, graphics programmers, scientists, and other specialists who require highly specialized image processing.

• Algorithms now exist for a wide variety of sophisticated image processing applications required by software engineers and developers, advanced programmers, graphics programmers, scientists, and related specialists
• This bestselling book has been completely updated to include the latest algorithms, including 2D vision methods in content-based searches, details on modern classifier methods, and graphics cards used as image processing computational aids
• Saves hours of mathematical calculating by using distributed processing and GPU programming, and gives non-mathematicians the shortcuts needed to program relatively sophisticated applications.

Algorithms for Image Processing and Computer Vision, 2nd Edition provides the tools to speed development of image processing applications.