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Preface xxi

We left out some topics because of personal taste, or because we became
exhausted and stopped writing about a particular area, or because we learned
about them too late to put them in, or because we had to shorten some chapter, or
because we didn’t understand them, or any of hundreds of other reasons. We have
tended to omit detailed discussions of material that is mainly of historical interest,
and offer instead some historical remarks at the end of each chapter.
We have tried to be both generous and careful in attributing ideas, but neither
of us claims to be a fluent intellectual archaeologist, and computer vision is a very
big topic indeed. This means that some ideas may have deeper histories than we
have indicated, and that we may have omitted citations.

There are several recent textbooks on computer vision. Szeliski (2010) deals
with the whole of vision. Parker (2010) deals specifically with algorithms. Davies
(2005) and Steger et al. (2008) deal with practical applications, particularly regis-
tration. Bradski and Kaehler (2008) is an introduction to OpenCV, an important
open-source package of computer vision routines.
There are numerous more specialized references. Hartley and Zisserman
(2000a) is a comprehensive account of what is known about multiple view ge-
ometry and estimation of multiple view parameters. Ma et al. (2003b) deals with
3D reconstruction methods. Cyganek and Siebert (2009) covers 3D reconstruction
and matching. Paragios et al. (2010) deals with mathematical models in computer
vision. Blake et al. (2011) is a recent summary of what is known about Markov
random field models in computer vision. Li and Jain (2005) is a comprehensive
account of face recognition. Moeslund et al. (2011), which is in press at time of
writing, promises to be a comprehensive account of computer vision methods for
watching people. Dickinson et al. (2009) is a collection of recent summaries of the
state of the art in object recognition. Radke (2012) is a forthcoming account of
computer vision methods applied to special effects.
Much of computer vision literature appears in the proceedings of various con-
ferences. The three main conferences are: the IEEE Conference on Computer
Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR); the IEEE International Conference on
Computer Vision (ICCV); and the European Conference on Computer Vision. A
significant fraction of the literature appears in regional conferences, particularly
the Asian Conference on Computer Vision (ACCV) and the British Machine Vi-
sion Conference (BMVC). A high percentage of published papers are available on
the web, and can be found with search engines; while some papers are confined to
pay-libraries, to which many universities provide access, most can be found without
cost.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In preparing this book, we have accumulated a significant set of debts. A number
of anonymous reviewers read several drafts of the book for both first and second
edition and made extremely helpful contributions. We are grateful to them for their
time and efforts.
Our editor for the first edition, Alan Apt, organized these reviews with the