This text contains information on computer graphics presented at the 5th IEEE Southwest Symposium on Image Analysis and Interpretation.

In ultrasound imaging and video visual perception is hindered by speckle multiplicative noise that degrades the quality. Noise reduction is therefore essential for improving the visual observation quality or as a pre-processing step for further automated analysis, such as image/video segmentation, texture analysis and encoding in ultrasound imaging and video. The goal of the first book (book 1 of 2 books) was to introduce the problem of speckle in ultrasound image and video as well as the theoretical background, algorithmic steps, and the MatlabTM for the following group of despeckle filters: linear despeckle filtering, non-linear despeckle filtering, diffusion despeckle filtering, and wavelet despeckle filtering. The goal of this book (book 2 of 2 books) is to demonstrate the use of a comparative evaluation framework based on these despeckle filters (introduced on book 1) on cardiovascular ultrasound image and video processing and analysis. More specifically, the despeckle filtering evaluation framework is based on texture analysis, image quality evaluation metrics, and visual evaluation by experts. This framework is applied in cardiovascular ultrasound image/video processing on the tasks of segmentation and structural measurements, texture analysis for differentiating between two classes (i.e. normal vs disease) and for efficient encoding for mobile applications. It is shown that despeckle noise reduction improved segmentation and measurement (of tissue structure investigated), increased the texture feature distance between normal and abnormal tissue, improved image/video quality evaluation and perception and produced significantly lower bitrates in video encoding. Furthermore, in order to facilitate further applications we have developed in MATLABTM two different toolboxes that integrate image (IDF) and video (VDF) despeckle filtering, texture analysis, and image and video quality evaluation metrics. The code for these toolsets is open source and these are available to download complementary to the two monographs.

Images have always been very important in human life. Their applications range from primitive communication between humans of all ages to advanced technologies in the industrial, medical and military field. The increased possibilities to capture and analyze images have contributed to the largeness that the scientific field of "image processing" has become today. Many techniques are being applied, including soft computing. "Soft Computing in Image Processing: Recent Advances" follows the edited volumes "Fuzzy Techniques in Image Processing" (volume 52, published in 2000) and "Fuzzy Filters for Image Processing" (volume 122, published in 2003), and covers a wide range of both practical and theoretical applications of soft computing in image processing. The 16 excellent chapters of the book have been grouped into five parts: Applications in Remote Sensing, Applications in Image Retrieval, Applications in Image Analysis, Other Applications, and Theoretical Contributions. The focus of the book is on practical applications, which makes it interesting for every researcher that is involved with soft computing, image processing, or both scientific branches.

"IEEE Computer Society Order Number PR01846"--verso of T.p.

Hydrocarbon exploration and production incorporate great technology challenges for the oil and gas industry. In order to meet the world's future demand for oil and gas, further technological advance is needed, which in turn requires research across multiple disciplines, including mathematics, geophysics, geology, petroleum engineering, signal processing, and computer science. This book addresses important aspects and fundamental concepts in hydrocarbon exploration and production. Moreover, new developments and recent advances in the relevant research areas are discussed, whereby special emphasis is placed on mathematical methods and modelling. The book reflects the multi-disciplinary character of the hydrocarbon production workflow, ranging from seismic data imaging, seismic analysis and interpretation and geological model building, to numerical reservoir simulation. Various challenges concerning the production workflow are discussed in detail. The thirteen chapters of this joint work, authored by international experts from academic and industrial institutions, include survey papers of expository character as well as original research articles. Large parts of the material presented in this book were developed between November 2000 and April 2004 through the European research and training network NetAGES, "Network for Automated Geometry Extraction from Seismic". The new methods described here are currently being implemented as software tools at Schlumberger Stavanger Research, one of the world's largest service providers to the oil industry.