ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors present general views of computer vision and image processing based on optimization. Relaxation and regularization in both broad and narrow senses are used in various fields and problems of computer vision and image processing, and they are currently being combined with general purpose optimization algorithms. The principle and case examples of relaxation and regularization are discussed; the application of optimization to shape description that is a particularly important problem in the field is described; and the use of a genetic algorithm (GA) as a method of optimization is introduced.
