Handbook of Image and Video Processing

Abstract

ed Al Bovic San Diego: Academic Press (2000) 891pp, price: £64.95, ISBN: 0 12 119790 5 If you want to know anything about image and video processing, this book is the place to begin and, probably, to end as well. Encyclopaedic in scale, 58 chapters by 97 contributors are packed into 891 pages. The subject is divided into 10 sections: an introduction, basic image processing techniques, image and video processing, image and video analysis, image compression, video compression, image and video acquisition, image and video rendering and assessment, image and video storage retrieval and communications, and applications of image processing. The boundaries of the coverage of the subject are quite sharply defined. First of all, an image is taken to mean a still picture that does not change with time, whereas a video evolves with time and generally contains moving and/or changing objects. There are two chapters on image and video acquisition; 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 to image and video processing and that is certainly not a criticism. As far as the depth of coverage is concerned, the objective is ambitious. This is to provide a resource that covers introductory, intermediate and advanced topics with equal clarity. I tested the extent to which this has been achieved by trying to find the answers to some questions about image and video compression. In the 277 pages of the 10 chapters devoted to this topic, there is a wealth of information extending from lossless coding, through other coding and quantization schemes, wavelet and JPEG compression, video and object-based coding, to MPEG video standards. I learned enough to realize that the subject is so mature, and the investment in both hardware and software so significant, that there must be little to be gained from research at the margins of any new approaches. It is the final section (134 pages) that contains the chapters that will be of most immediate interest to readers with a medical bias. This section is concerned with applications of image processing. The relevant chapters are on: computed tomography (x-ray, CT, PET and SPECT) with the emphasis on image reconstruction and three-dimensional topics; cardiac image processing, including the analysis of cardiac mechanics, perfusion and (perhaps oddly) electrocardiography; computer aided detection for screening mammography, concentrating on masses, calcifications and segmentation; and confocal microscopy. It is actually in these chapters that most information is to be found concerning the instrumentation for image acquisition. This is not an expensive book. Indeed, it is stupendously good value-for-money. Where else, in the field of image and video processing, can the knowledge of 97 contributors, all clearly expert and many deservedly famous, be so conveniently accessed? If there is a criticism, it has to be that the 55 pages of colour illustrations (which are additional to the 891 pages of text) are gathered together in four blocks, distributed through the book. These illustrations also appear in the text, but in grey scale. So, it is sometimes necessary to turn to the colour sections to appreciate the points that are being made. But this is only a small nuisance in exchange for what is presumably a substantial economy in the price of the book. Realistically, this is too big a book to be read from cover to cover. Consequently, it needs a good index and there is no criticism here. For example, I looked up 'ultrasound imaging' and found a reference to intravascular scanning and its combination with biplane angiography to create a map of the vessel in 3D space; this is a technique of which I was previously unaware. I also found a reference to echography, with an informative discussion of segmentation 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 Methodist University as the editor-in-chief. In editing and co-authoring the handbook, Al Bovik of the University of Texas at Austin has discharged a monumental assignment with spectacular success. If you are interesting in image and video processing, you must have a copy.