Readings in Computer Vision

The field of computer vision combines techniques from physics, mathematics, psychology, artificial intelligence, and computer science to examine how machines might construct meaningful descriptions of their surrounding environment. The editors of this volume, prominent researchers and leaders of the SRI International AI Center Perception Group, have selected sixty papers, most published since 1980, with the viewpoint that computer vision is concerned with solving seven basic problems:

Reconstructing 3D scenes from 2D images

Decomposing images into their component parts

Recognizing and assigning labels to scene objects

Deducing and describing relations among scene objects

Determining the nature of computer architectures that can support the visual function

Representing abstractions in the world of computer memory

Matching stored descriptions to image representation

Each chapter of this volume addresses one of these problems through an introductory discussion, which identifies major ideas and summarizes approaches, and through reprints of key research papers. Two appendices on crucial assumptions in image interpretation and on parallel architectures for vision applications, a glossary of technical terms, and a comprehensive bibliography and index complete the volume.