Volumetric Image Analysis

Klappentext

Volumetric digital images are three-dimensional image arrays corresponding to a stack of two-dimensional slices, produced for instance by a tomographic scanner. Such images play an important role in various applications, especially in medical image processing, in the processing of seismic data and in many other areas. In recent years the automatic analysis of volumetric images has gained in importance. One reason for this is that the amount of data has increased considerably as new scanner technology has become available. At the same time, advances in computer technology have made it possible to handle these large amounts of data. There are a number of issues that are specific to the analysis of volumetric image data. Volumetric images are usually much larger than two-dimensional images and thus call for space efficient analysis techniques. Furthermore, differences between two- and three-dimensional geometry stand in the way of a straight-forward generalization from the two-dimensional to the three-dimensional case. This book presents a largely self-contained comprehensive introduction to the field in a form that can serve as a textbook at an advanced level. It will also be useful to engineers and computer scientists with an interest in volumetric image analysis systems.