Color Image Processing and Applications

Abstract

This book claims to fill a niche in the provision of textbooks devoted to image processing by being devoted to colour aspects. It is aimed at researchers and practitioners working in the area of colour image processing, particularly graduates in Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering. The book is structured in such a way that, after reading an introductory chapter on colour, readers can work their way through the following four chapters on image processing, or omit them and move directly to the final three chapters that deal with colour image analysis and coding. It is not immediately apparent from reading the preface that companion image processing software is available online from the publisher's website, and this is not made use of as an integral part of the book. Regrettably, the book shows much evidence of a lack of rigorous proof reading and editing. A number of errors can be found, particularly in the first chapter; this provides the fundamentals in colour science on which the book is based. For example, on the first page the visible spectrum is incorrectly reproduced with the wrong wavelength scale and photoreceptors are referred to as `roads'. A few pages on there is a complete mismatch between the explanatory text and diagrams concerning the CIE, XYZ and RGB colour matching functions. One diagram appears to have been reproduced twice, is incorrectly titled and not annotated. Also, the CIE chromaticity diagram lacks a wavelength scale and the colours of the diagram are incorrectly reproduced. Unfortunately, these fundamental errors appear in the first ten pages and have the unfortunate effect of detracting from the authoritative nature of the book as a whole. A further example of poor proof reading/editing can be found towards the end of the chapter in which photographic film is defined as follows: `The film which is used by conventional cameras contains three emulsion layers which are sensitive to red and blue light, which enters through the camera lens.' The chapters do improve, however, as one goes through the book, although in chapter 2 the description of the origins of photographic noise is incorrect and incomplete (`the noise is mainly due to the silver grains that precipitate during film exposure'). Also, the origins of noise in photoelectronic sensors are incompletely described. Each chapter is accompanied by a substantial number of references to the primary sources of information, many of which are to recent literature in the field, in very useful summary or conclusion sections. It is puzzling that in view of the significance of the Fourier transform in image processing, it is not included, other than a brief mention of the Discrete Fourier Transform in the chapter on image compression. Adaptive image filters are described at length in chapter 3, which is followed by chapters dedicated to colour edge detection, enhancement and restoration, image segmentation, image compression and emerging applications. The latter makes interesting reading but is based almost exclusively on the detection and automatic location of the human face. The index is not very exhaustive and as a consequence it is difficult to find many items that are discussed in the text but are not indexed. A few examples include: Wiener filter, Sobel, Prewitt and Robert's edge detection, all of which appear in the text and in the indices of most books on image processing but not in the index to this book. Also, most of the existing texts on image processing include many aspects of colour, which detracts somewhat from this book's claimed uniqueness, although it does contain more state-of-the-art aspects. Ralph Jacobson