Preface

Over the last two decades, we have witnessed an explosive growth in both the diversity of techniques and the range of applications of image processing. However, the area of color image processing is still sporadically covered, despite having become commonplace, with consumers choosing the convenience of color imaging over traditional grayscale imaging. With advances in image sensors, digital TV, image databases, and video and multimedia systems, and with the proliferation of color printers, color image displays, DVD devices, and especially digital cameras and image-enabled consumer electronics, color image processing appears to have become the main focus of the image-processing research community. Processing color images or, more generally, processing multichannel images, such as satellite images, color filter array images, microarray images, and color video sequences, is a nontrivial extension of the classical grayscale processing. Indeed, the vectorial nature of multichannel images suggests a different approach — that of vector algebra and vector fields — should be utilized in approaching this research problem. Recently, there have been many color image processing and analysis solutions, and many interesting results have been reported concerning filtering, enhancement, restoration, edge detection, analysis, compression, preservation, manipulation, and evaluation of color images. The surge of emerging applications, such as single-sensor imaging, color-based multimedia, digital rights management, art, and biomedical applications, indicates that the demand for color imaging solutions will grow considerably in the next decade.

The purpose of this book is to fill the existing literature gap and comprehensively cover the system, processing and application aspects of digital color imaging. Due to the rapid developments in specialized areas of color image processing, this book has the form of a contributed volume, in which well-known experts address specific research and application problems. It presents the state-of-the-art as well as the most recent trends in color image processing and applications. It serves the needs of different readers at different levels. It can be used as a textbook in support of a graduate course in image processing or as a stand-alone reference for graduate students, researchers, and practitioners. For example, the researcher can use it as an up-to-date reference, because it offers a broad survey of the relevant literature. Finally, practicing engineers may find it useful in the design and the implementation of various image- and video-processing tasks.

We would like to thank the contributors for their effort, valuable time, and motivation to enhance the profession by providing material for a fairly wide audience, while still offering their individual research insights and opinions. We are very grateful for their enthusiastic support, timely response, and willingness to incorporate suggestions from us, from other contributing authors, and from a number of colleagues in the field who served as reviewers. Particular thanks are due to the reviewers, whose input helped to improve the quality of the contributions. Finally, a word of appreciation goes to CRC Press for giving us the opportunity to edit a book on color image processing. In particular, we would like to thank Dr. Phillip A. Laplante for his encouragement, Nora Konopka for initiating this project, Jim McGovern for handling the copy editing and final production, and Helena Redshaw for her support and assistance at all times.

Rastislav Lukac
Konstantinos N. Plataniotis