Image processing using optical or digital approaches are mature fields covered by many textbooks. However, in literature a gap exists in terms of and digital worlds and to enable better communication between them. The cover's artwork of this book serves as a good illustration of this idea. In addition to traditional aspects of optics and digital image processing, this book includes the state-of-the-art methods and techniques currently used by the researchers as well as the most significant applications. It is necessary to emphasize that a book that cover both optical and digital domains including the fundamentals, the current state-of-the-art and covering a selected range of applications has not so far been published. From the contents: Chapters 1-4 introduce the basic concepts in optics, photonics, information theory and digital image processing. Chapters 5-17 include the basic methodologies and techniques that serves as the foundations upon which the remainder of the book has been built upon. Chapter 18 serves a bridge between the analog and digital image processing approaches. Chapter 19-34 include a selection of the most representative applications following an optical and/or digital approach. In most of the cases the editors' intention has been to illustrate how the different applications areas have been solved by optical, digital or even hybrid optical-digital approaches. Chapter 35-38 describe four hands-on projects allowing the reader to experiment with some of the described techniques.
