Chapter 12. Biometric and Biomedical Image Processing

Summary

Some of the major applications of image processing we have witnessed in the last two decades are in the areas of biometric and biomedical image processing. This chapter presents a cursory overview of the applications of these two areas of imaging applications. The biometric identification systems are useful in several commercial and law enforcement applications specially in criminal identification, security system, video phone, teleconference, credit card verification, photo IDs for personal identification, etc. Recognition of human faces, fingerprints, signatures and many other such biometric images constitute an important area of research in this field of computer vision. In this chapter we have presented some techniques of automated face and signature recognition techniques. Similarly there are different types of biomedical images such as x-ray images, CT images, MRI images, ultrasound images etc., which are used in medical field for disease diagnosis and treatment planning. These have been briefly reviewed here. However, the most commonly used method for preliminary diagnosis of disease is by the use of x-ray images and in this chapter we have discussed the image processing techniques to enhance, filter, segment and interpret such images. Applications of biomedical images, such as, chest x-ray, dental x-ray, and mammogram images have been discussed here.