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Acknowledgments

Thanks this time to Sonny Chan, for the inspiration for the parallel computing
chapter, to Jeff Boyd, for introducing me repeatedly to OpenCV, and to Ralph
Huntsinger and Ghislain C. Vansteenkiste, for getting me into and successfully
out of my Ph.D. program.
Almost all the images used in this book were created by me, using an IBM
PC with a frame grabber and a Sony CCD camera, an HP scanner, and a Sony
Eyetoy as a webcam. Credits for the few images that were not acquired in this
way are as follows:
Corel Corporation made available the color image of the grasshopper on
a leaf shown in Figure 3.33, and also was the origin of the example search
images in Figure 10.5.
ThesampleimagesinFigure10.1wereapartofthe ALOI data set, useof
which was allowed by J. M. Geusebroek.
Thanks to Big Hill Veterinary Clinic in Cochrane, Alberta, Canada, for the
X-ray image shown in Figure 3.10e.
Finally, thanks to Dr. N. Wardlaw, of the University of Calgary Department
of Geology, for the geological micropore image of Figure 3.16.
Most importantly, I need to thank my family: my wife, Katrin, and children,
Bailey and Max. They sacrificed time and energy so that this work could be
completed. I appreciate it and hope that the effort has been worthwhile.

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