Image Processing: Principles and Applications

1 Image Processing: Principles and Applications by Tinku Acharya, Ajoy K. Ray (Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2005, 448 pages, hardcover, ISBN: 0-471-71998-6) reviewed by Francesco Camastra, Department of Applied Science, University of Napoli Parthenope, via A. De Gasperi 5, 89133 Napoli, Italy, email: francesco.camastra@uniparthenope.it Image Processing is a very important research topic, due its massive use on many applicative areas such as multimedia, biometrics, biomedical imaging, remote sensing, optical character readers and so on. The book, object of the review, has the aim, in the authors’ originary plan, of providing a fresh look at the contents of an introductory book on image processing. This review is organized in two sections: the Overview where the contents of the book are examined and the Conclusion where the most important features are discussed. I. OVERVIEW The book is organized in eighteen chapters. In the first chapter, the authors provide an introduction to the fundamentals of image processing and describe the main characteristics of the work. The second chapter introduces the foundations of the image formation and their digital representation. Besides, sampling and quantization issues are reviewed. The third chapter presents the basilar concepts of color imagery, the main color spaces and their transformation techniques. In addition, the chapter provides a novel color interpolation method for reconstructing full color imagery. In the fourth chapter, several image 2 transformation techniques and their underlying theory is discussed. In particular, Discrete Fourier Transform, Discrete Cosine Transform, Karhunen-Loeve Transform, Singular Value Decomposition, WalshHadamard Transform are reviewed. The fifth and the sixth chapters are devoted respectively to the Wavelet transform and the presentation of some algorithms for image enhancement, restoration and filtering. The image segmentation is the topic of the seventh chapter. Segmentation strategies such as thresholding, region growing and clustering are described. The eighth chapter is devoted to the presentation of some supervised and unsupervised pattern classification methods. Multi-layer-Perceptron, Self-Organizing Maps and Counterpropagation Networks are discussed. The ninth chapter deals with some texture representation and analysis methods. Besides, a few shape discrimination strategies are presented. In the tenth chapter some image processing algorithms based on fuzzy set theoretical approaches are described. The eleventh chapter is devoted to the content-based image retrieval and image mining. The twelfth and the thirteenth chapters are devoted respectively to biomedical image analysis and image mining and to remotely sensed image processing applications. The fourteenth chapter presents principles and applications of dynamic scene analysis, moving-object detection and tracking. The fifteenth chapter is devoted to the fundamentals of image compression. Last three chapters, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth chapters are entirely devoted to the standard JPEG and to its further extension JPEG2000. II. C ONCLUSION The literature on image processing is very rich (e.g. [3], [4]). That being said, the book presents several striking features. The book is written in a clear and effective way. The authors pay special attention to the color representation and interpolation presenting the topic with particular care. Besides, the book offers comprehensive surveys on JPEG standards, describing in large detail the new emergent standard JPEG2000. The authors devote a large part of the book to the discussion of practical applications. Image processing applications such as context-based image retrieval, biomedical, biometrical (e.g. face recognition and signal verification), remote sensing and dynamic scene analysis (e.g. moving object detection and tracking) are described in an effective way. Therefore the book can be particularly interesting for researchers and 3 professionals who, in their professional daily practice, have to cope with image processing problems. Nevertheless, the book presents some drawbacks. In the eighth chapter, devoted to the recognition of image patterns, the authors describe in detail Counterpropagation Networks [2], which are not popular in image processing community anymore. On the contrary powerful classification methods such as Support Vector Machines [1] are neither described nor mentioned. Since SVMs are more and more used as classifiers in image processing, the authors’ choice is arguable. In the eleventh chapter, devoted to image mining and content-based image retrieval, MPEG-7 standard is presented without providing a description of the basic MPEG standards. Hence a short review of the basic MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 standards could make the book more readable. Besides, the number of chapters is excessive. For instance, the fifth chapter, devoted to the wavelet transformation, could be integrated in the fourth chapter, whose topic is the image transformation techniques. Besides, the seventeenth and the eighteenth chapters, both devoted to JPEG2000 standard, could be gathered in a unique chapter, improving the organization of the book. Finally, the lack of problem sections seems to discourage the book usage as textbook for undergraduate students. Nevertheless, the book can be a useful monography for students and for researchers and engineers who want respectively deepen and refresh their knowledge in image processing. In summary, despite a few shortcomings, the efforts of the authors are commandable. R EFERENCES [1] N. Cristianini and J. Shawe-Taylor, Introduction to Support Vector Machines, Cambridge Press, 2000. [2] R. Hecht-Nielson, “Counterpropagation Networks”, Applied Optics, 26, 4979-4984, 1987. [3] R. C. Gonzalez and R. E. Woods, Digital Image Processing, 2nd edition, Prentice Hall, 2001. [4] W. K. Pratt, Digital Image Processing, 3rd edition, John Wiley and Sons, 2001.