Handbook of Image and Video Processing

Abstract

ed Al Bovic San Diego: Academic Press (2000) 891pp, price: £64.95, ISBN: 0 12 119790 5If you want toknow anything about image and video processing, this book is the placeto begin and, probably, to end as well. Encyclopaedic in scale, 58chapters by 97 contributors are packed into 891 pages. The subject isdivided into 10 sections: an introduction, basic image processingtechniques, image and video processing, image and video analysis, imagecompression, video compression, image and video acquisition, image andvideo rendering and assessment, image and video storage retrieval andcommunications, and applications of image processing.The boundaries ofthe coverage of the subject are quite sharply defined. First of all, animage is taken to mean a still picture that does not change with time,whereas a video evolves with time and generally contains moving and/orchanging objects. There are two chapters on image and videoacquisition;these are concerned with image capture, Fourier analysis, sampling rate,interpolation and reconstruction of continuous time-varying imagery.Neither image display nor perception are mentioned, even in the index.Image fusion is not included. Thus, the book is strictly limited toimage and video processing and that is certainly not a criticism.As faras the depth of coverage is concerned, the objective is ambitious. Thisis to provide a resource that covers introductory, intermediate andadvanced topics with equal clarity. I tested the extent to which thishas been achieved by trying to find the answers to some questions aboutimage and video compression. In the 277 pages of the 10 chapters devotedto this topic, there is a wealth of information extending from losslesscoding, through other coding and quantization schemes, wavelet and JPEGcompression, video and object-based coding, to MPEG video standards. Ilearned enough to realize that the subject is so mature, and theinvestment in both hardware and software so significant, that there mustbe little to be gained from research at the margins of any newapproaches.It is the final section (134 pages) that contains thechapters that will be of most immediate interest to readers with amedical bias. This section is concerned with applications of imageprocessing. The relevant chapters are on: computed tomography (x-ray,CT, PET and SPECT) with the emphasis on image reconstruction andthree-dimensional topics; cardiac image processing, including theanalysis of cardiac mechanics, perfusion and (perhaps oddly)electrocardiography; computer aided detection for screening mammography,concentrating on masses, calcifications and segmentation; and confocalmicroscopy. It is actually in these chapters that most information isto be found concerning the instrumentation for image acquisition.This is not an expensive book. Indeed, it is stupendously goodvalue-for-money. Where else, in the field of image and video processing,can the knowledge of 97 contributors, all clearly expert and manydeservedly famous, be so conveniently accessed? If there is a criticism,it has to be that the 55 pages of colour illustrations (which areadditional to the 891 pages of text) are gathered together in fourblocks, distributed through the book. These illustrations also appearin the text, butin grey scale. So, it is sometimes necessary to turn tothe colour sections to appreciate the points that are being made. Butthis is only a small nuisance in exchange for what is presumably asubstantial economy in the price of the book.Realistically, this is toobig a book to be read from cover to cover. Consequently, it needs a goodindex and there is no criticism here. For example, I looked up'ultrasound imaging' and found a reference to intravascular scanning andits combination with biplane angiography to create a map of the vesselin 3D space; this is a technique of which I was previously unaware. Ialso found a reference to echography, with an informative discussion ofsegmentation which, in this situation, is a far from trivial task.This handbook is the first in a new Academic Press series in communications,networking and multimedia, with Jerry Gibson of Southern MethodistUniversity as the editor-in-chief. In editing and co-authoring thehandbook, Al Bovik of the University of Texas at Austin has discharged amonumental assignment with spectacular success. If you are interestingin image and video processing, you must have a copy.