News Release

Image processing and mathematical morphology in new text by NJIT professor

Book Announcement

New Jersey Institute of Technology

Image Processing and Mathematical Morphology: Fundamentals and Applications (CRC Publisher, 2009), a new reference book by NJIT computer science professor Frank Y. Shih http://web.njit.edu/~shih offers a comprehensive overview of morphological mechanisms and techniques and their relation to image processing. More than merely a tutorial on vital technical information, the book places this knowledge into a theoretical framework. Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of the structure of words.

Shih is the author of an earlier text, Digital Watermarking and Steganography: Fundamentals and Techniques (CRC, 2008).

Shih's new text will help readers analyze key principles and architectures and then use the author's novel ideas on implementation of advanced algorithms to formulate a practical and detailed plan to develop and foster their own ideas.

The text covers the history and state-of-the-art techniques related to image morphological processing. Practical examples are abundant.

A clear tutorial on a complex technology along with other tools that rely on intuition will help give readers a clear understanding of the subject.

The text also includes an updated bibliography and useful graphs and illustrations. And, it details several new algorithms so that users may adapt them to derive their own solution approaches.

People have called the book an invaluable reference for assessing and simplifying problems and their complexities. The book will provide the necessary data and methodology to master current theoretical developments and applications, and create new ones.

Shih was among the earliest researchers to initiate mathematical morphology research with applications to image processing, feature extraction, and object representation. "Threshold decomposition of grayscale morphology into binary morphology" by Shih, published in 1989 in Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), was a breakthrough to solve the bottleneck problem in grayscale morphological processing. Several other articles by him in Image Processing and Signal Processing, also IEEE publications, were innovations to achieve fast exact Euclidean distance transformation and to conduct robust image enhancement, edge linking, and image segmentation.

"The development of digital multimedia, the importance and impact of image processing and mathematical morphology are well-documented in areas ranging from automated vision detection and inspection to object recognition, image analysis and pattern recognition," added Shih.

"Individuals working in these ever-evolving fields require a solid grasp of basic fundamentals, theory, and related applications. Few books can provide the unique tools for learning contained in this text."

Shih received his doctorate in electrical and computer engineering from Purdue University; he has published 100 journal papers, 95 conference papers, 2 books, and 10 book chapters. He's on the editorial board of nine international journals in this field including the International Journal of Pattern Recognition; International Journal of Pattern Recognition Letters; International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence and Journal of Information Hiding and Multimedia Signal Processing.

Shih received the Research Initiation Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and has received numerous grants from NSF, U.S. Navy and Air Force and industry.

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NJIT, New Jersey's science and technology university, at the edge in knowledge, enrolls more than 8,000 students in bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in 92 degree programs offered by six colleges: Newark College of Engineering, New Jersey School of Architecture, College of Science and Liberal Arts, School of Management, Albert Dorman Honors College and College of Computing Sciences. NJIT is renowned for expertise in architecture, applied mathematics, wireless communications and networking, solar physics, advanced engineered particulate materials, nanotechnology, neural engineering and e-learning. In 2009, Princeton Review named NJIT among the nation's top 25 campuses for technology and among the top 150 for best value. U.S. News & World Report's 2008 Annual Guide to America's Best Colleges ranked NJIT in the top tier of national research universities.


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