Image Processing, Analysis and Machine Vision represent an exciting part
of modern cognitive and computer science. Following an explosion of
inter- est during the Seventies, the Eighties were characterized by the
maturing of the field and the significant growth of active applications;
Remote Sensing, Technical Diagnostics, Autonomous Vehicle Guidance and
Medical Imaging are the most rapidly developing areas. This progress can
be seen in an in- creasing number of software and hardware products on
the market as well as in a number of digital image processing and
machine vision courses offered at universities world-wide. There are
many texts available in the areas we cover - most (indeed, all of which
we know) are referenced somewhere in this book. The subject suffers,
however, from a shortage of texts at the 'elementary' level - that
appropriate for undergraduates beginning or completing their studies of
the topic, or for Master's students - and the very rapid developments
that have taken and are still taking place, which quickly age some of
the very good text books produced over the last decade or so. This book
reflects the authors' experience in teaching one and two semester
undergraduate and graduate courses in Digital Image Processing, Digital
Image Analysis, Machine Vision, Pattern Recognition and Intelligent
Robotics at their respective institutions.