The Essential Guide to Image Processing- P1: We are in the middle of an exciting period of time in the field of image processing. Indeed, scarcely a week passes where we do not hear an announcement of some new technological breakthrough in the areas of digital computation and telecommunication. | Academic Press is an imprint of Elsevier 30 Corporate Drive Suite 400 Burlington MA 01803 USA 525 B Street Suite 1900 San Diego California 92101-4495 USA 84 Theobald s Road London WC1X 8RR UK Copyright 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical including photocopy recording or any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher. Permissions may be sought directly from Elsevier s Science Technology Rights Department in Oxford UK phone 44 1865 843830 fax 44 1865 853333 E-mail permissions@. You may also complete your request online via the Elsevier homepage http by selecting Support Contact then Copyright and Permission and then Obtaining Permissions. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Application submitted British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-12-374457-9 For information on all Academic Press publications visit our Web site at Typeset by diacriTech India Printed in the United States of America 09 10 11 12 987654321 Working together to grow libraries in developing countries ELSEVIER Sabre Foundation Preface The visual experience is the principal way that humans sense and communicate with their world. We are visual beings and images are being made increasing available to us in electronic digital format via digital cameras the internet and hand-held devices with large-format screens. With much of the technology being introduced to the consumer marketplace being rather new digital image processing remains a hot topic and promises to be one for a very long time. Of course digital image processing has been around for quite awhile and indeed methods pervade nearly every branch of science and engineering. One only has to .
