The text has been prepared for researchers involved in picture
processing. It is designed to help them in mastering the methods at the
professional level. From the viewpoint of both signal theory and
information theory, the treatment covers the basic principles of the
digital methods for the processing of continuous signals such as picture
signals. In addition, it reviews schemes for correcting signal
distortion in imaging systems, for the enhancement of picture contrast,
and for the automatic measurement of picture details. The text contains
new results on digital filtering and transformation, and a new approach
to picture processing. The main applications, as documented by numerous
examples, are in space research, remote sensing, medical diag- nostics,
nondestructive testing. The material has been tested extensively in
class-room use with students of both computer science and electrical
engineering at the senior undergraduate and the first-year graduate
level. The present edition is not a translation of the original Russian
book, but it has been extended substantially as well as updated. The
author is grate- ful to Dr. H. Lotsch of Springer-Verlag for his
proposal to prepare this text and for many helpful suggestions. He likes
to thank Dr. P. Hawkes for a careful copy-editing of the manuscript, and
acknowledges numerous criti- cal comments by Professors S.L. Gorelik,
T.S. Huang, A.W. Lohmann, and A.M. Trakhtman.