The language of an image is universal. Images were means of communicating information in ancient days. Even today, although people from different parts of the world speak in different languages, an image conveys almost the same universal meaning to all. With the rapid development of modern computer technologies and with the increasing attempt in getting information at ones fingertips, the importance of communication of information using images cannot be ignored.

The fields of digital image processing and computer vision are fast growing. These days the processing of both the grayscale and color images as well as video has become an important research and investigation tool in many areas of engineering and science. The interest in image processing started with the application in the newspaper industry where attempts were made at improving the quality of the picture transmitted through the cable during 1920s. Since then the field has matured and there are various applications using the image processing techniques. Some of these applications include medical imaging, remote sensing, industrial, storage and transmission and so on.

The task of image processing deals with Processing of images, Analysis of image and image understanding. Recent technologies in image processing try to meet the demand for better picture quality, faster data rate and high accuracy. Recent developments in camera, frame grabbers, and faster algorithms have all contributed to meeting the demands of present generation.

“Vision is the process of discovering from the images what is present in the world and where it is’’ (David Marr). Computer Vision is the study and analysis of pictures and videos in order to carry out the tasks similar to those carried out by human beings. With the evolution of computing machines, researchers have attempted to see whether these machines can be programmed to imitate human cognitive process such as visual perception. Even with the availability of large computational power and memory the modeling of perceptual process is still an unsolved problem. Though we are still far from achieving ultimate goal, the field of computer vision has inspired a large number of researchers from various disciplines to explore issues of this field and to achieve better results. In recent days, techniques developed by vision researchers are widely employed in the areas such as visual surveillance, medical imaging, video compression and so on. The recently concluded IEEE ICCV-2005 had a full-fledged workshop on visual surveillance. It may be mentioned here that visual surveillance is playing a major role in cutting the costs involved in preventing crimes and terrorism. This has become a major research issue currently. There exists a strong research scope for better methods for analysis, feature extraction as well as storing huge image data captured while using video surveillance.