ABSTRACT
Image processing is an essential field in many applications, including medical imaging, astronomy, astrophysics, surveillance, video, image compression and transmission, just to name a few. In one dimension, images are called signals; these are formed of samples defined at discrete points in time. In two dimensions we work with planar images that are formed of pixels. In three dimensions we work with volumetric images that are formed of voxels (such as magneto-resonance images). Images can be grayscale (represented by singlevalued functions), or color (represented by vector-valued functions). Noise, blur and other types of imperfections often degrade acquired images. Thus such images have to be pre-processed before any further analysis.
