Surya Prakash

Digital images play a significant role in representing useful information; however, they may get distorted while passing through several operational stages, such as image acquisition, compression, transmission, processing, and reconstruction. Similarly, during the transmission of images, some data may be lost and the quality of the image may degrade due to bandwidth limitation. The use of distorted images in any application compromises its performance; and therefore, the identification and quantification of degradation become key issues to address in restoring the distorted images. This book covers different quality assessment techniques for natural images. It further discusses image enhancement techniques that are based on estimated quality. This book presents image quality assessment techniques for different distortions, such as poor contrast, poor illumination, noise and artifacts in deblocked images. Also presented are quality-aware techniques for image enhancement for different distortions. Review and objective questions (with answers) for each chapter will be available online as part of the supplementary material.

This book presents the state-of-the-art techniques and recent research progress on Ear Biometrics. Among the various physiological traits, the reasons for the ear to gain much attention in recent years are many folds. It has been found to be a reliable biometrics for human verification and identification. Ears are remarkably consistent and unlike face, it does not change shape with different expressions or age, and remain fixed in the middle of the side of the head against a predictable background. The book contains figures, tables and plots to illustrate the techniques in an easy and lucid manner. The book also provides an extensive literature on the subject, where readers have the benefit of receiving all the relevant material at one place in a very comprehensive manner. This book caters students, academics, researchers, practitioners who are interested in the field of Ear Biometrics and its applications in face recognition and security.

This book presents the state-of-the-art techniques and recent research progress on Ear Biometrics. Among the various physiological traits, the reasons for the ear to gain much attention in recent years are many folds. It has been found to be a reliable biometrics for human verification and identification. Ears are remarkably consistent and unlike face, it does not change shape with different expressions or age, and remain fixed in the middle of the side of the head against a predictable background. The book contains figures, tables and plots to illustrate the techniques in an easy and lucid manner. The book also provides an extensive literature on the subject, where readers have the benefit of receiving all the relevant material at one place in a very comprehensive manner. This book caters students, academics, researchers, practitioners who are interested in the field of Ear Biometrics and its applications in face recognition and security.