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Reviewer: Michael L. Hilton

The field of digital image and video processing has undergone rapid academic and commercial growth during the last decade. Although there are several standard textbooks on digital image processing, there are no standard texts on video processing. Tekalp's work is a much-needed graduate-level text that provides a comprehensive introduction to the basic principles of digital video processing. It is the first real candidate for a standard digital video text that I have seen. The book consists of 25 chapters, organized into six major parts: “Representation of Digital Video,” “Two-dimensional Motion Estimation,” “Three-dimensional Motion Estimation and Segmentation,” “Video Filtering,” “Still Image Compression,” and “Video Compression.” Some of the topics discussed in detail are video sampling and conversion between the various standard video representations; estimating the motion of objects in video sequences using optical flow, block-based, pel-recursive, and Bayesian methods; motion tracking; segmentation; noise filtering; and restoration and enhancement of video sequences. The chapters on image and video compression present summaries of the JPEG, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, and H.261 international compression standards, as well as describing current research in model-based coding. This is not a nuts-and-bolts book that will tell you how to implement, say, an MPEG video coder. This is a textbook designed for use in advanced graduate courses that present the mathematical principles behind the fundamental algorithms in digital video processing. Students should already have had courses in signal processing, linear algebra, and probability. The ratio of mathematical formulas to text is fairly high, which may deter readers without an adequate background. Although the author claims that a previous course in still image processing is not a necessity, I think it would help a great deal. Several exercises are provided at the end of each chapter. A complete set of master transparencies is available from the author upon request.