We will no doubt be asked many times: why on earth write a new book on computer vision? Fair question: there are already many good books on computer vision in the bookshops, as you will find referenced later, so why add to them? Part of the answer is that any textbook is a snapshot of material that exists before it. Computer vision, the art of processing images stored within a computer, has seen a considerable amount of research by highly qualified people and the volume of research would appear even to have increased in recent years. This means that a lot of new techniques have been developed, and many of the more recent approaches have yet to migrate to textbooks.
But it is not just the new research: part of the speedy advance in computer vision technique has left some areas covered only in scanty detail. By the nature of research, one cannot publish material on technique that is seen more to fill historical gaps, rather than to advance knowledge. This is again where a new text can contribute.
