IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, IEEE Signal Processing Society,
and The Signal & Multimedia Processing Lab. - University of Sydney

(2000 International Symposium on Multimedia Information Processing)

December 13-15, 2000, 
University of Sydney, Australia

MULTIMEDIA BOOK RELEASE:

Multimedia Image and Video Processing 
(CRC PRESS IMAGE PROCESSING SERIES) 
Edited by Ling Guan, Sun-Yuan Kung, Jan Larsen
Published September, 2000
ISBN 0-8493-3492-b

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Multimedia is one of the most important aspects of the information era. Although there are books dealing with various aspects of multimedia, a book comprehensively covering system, processing and application aspects of image and video data in a multimedia environment is urgently needed. Contributed by experts in this field, this book serves this purpose.

Our goal is to provide in a single volume an introduction to a variety of topics in image/video processing for multimedia. While an edited book has certain limitations and drawbacks, it is an ideal format for treating a broad spectrum of topics because it provides the opportunity for each topic to be written by an expert in that field. 

The topic of the book is on processing images and videos in multimedia environment. It covers the following subjects arranged in two parts: 

1) standards and fundamentals: standards, multimedia architecture for image processing, multimedia related image processing techniques, intelligent multimedia processing; 2) methodologies, techniques and applications: image/video coding, image/video storage and retrieval, digital video transmission, video conferencing, water marking, distance education, video on demand and telemedicine.

The book starts with the existing standards for multimedia, discussing their impacts to multimedia image and video processing, and pointing out possible directions for new standards. 

The design of multimedia architectures is based on the standards. It deals with the way visual data being processed and transmitted at a more practical level. Current and new architectures, their pros and cons are presented and discussed in Chapters 2 to 4. 

In multimedia related image processing techniques, Chapters 5 to 8 focus on conventional and intelligent image processing techniques relevant to multimedia, including preprocessing, segmentation and feature extraction techniques utilized in coding, storage and retrieval and transmission, media fusion and graphical interface.

Compression and coding of video/images is one of the focusing issues in multimedia. New development in transform/motion based algorithms in the compressed domain, content/object-based algorithms and rate-distortion based encoding are presented in Chapters 9 to 12.

Chapters 13 to 15 tackle content-based image/video retrieval. It covers  video modeling and retrieval, retrieval in the transform domain, indexing, parsing and the real-time aspects in retrieval.

The last chapters of the book, Chapters 16 to 19, present new results in multimedia application areas, including transcoding for multipoint video conferencing, distance education, watermarking techniques for multimedia processing and telemedicine.

Each chapter has been organized so that it can be covered in one to two weeks when this book is used as a principal reference or text in an senior or graduate course at a university.

It is generally assumed that the reader has prior exposure to the fundamentals of image/video processing. The chapters have been written with an emphasis on a tutorial presentation so that the reader interested in pursuing a particular topic further will be able to obtain a solid introduction to the topic through the appropriate chapter in this book. While the topics covered are related, each chapter can be read and used independently of the others.

This book is primarily a result of the collective efforts of the chapter authors. 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 our colleagues who served as reviewers.