Foreword

Image Processing in embedded devices has been an area of growing interest with the revolution of digital imaging devices since the last decade of the 20th century and it will continue to expand to new frontiers in this century. Despite its relevance, there is not, as far as I know, a comprehensive publication that address this topic encompassing practical aspects of image processing design.

With chapters contributed by both experienced researchers from academia as well as researchers and engineers from industry, the present publication covers fundamental aspects of image processing in embedded devices such as exposure correction, auto-focus, color rendition, noise reduction, demosaicing, encoding, red-eye removal, image categorization and presents relevant quality metrics and also recent trends in imaging.

The editors have done an excellent job of bringing out contributors that work with the challenges of finding solutions and also implementing image processing solutions for embedded imaging devices in a daily basis with continuous spread across all relevant operational aspects for an imaging system.

I believe, the present publication is going to be beneficial not only to imaging and engineering students but also be a reference for academic researchers and engineers working in imaging industry.

This publication is also unique because it moves away form the traditional paper book for technical publications and follows the trend of electronic book. This makes the publication more accessible, more portable with current e-readers in the market, potentially more environment friendly without ever going out of print. Electronic publications also attribute such language accessibility by electronic translations and text-to-speech software capabilities.

It is a great pleasure for me to write a foreword for this prestigious, multi-authored, international publication on a topic that I believe is very relevant to the imaging industry. Finally, I would like to compliment the editors and contributors for their effort in making this publication a great success.