Mastering OpenCV with
Practical Computer Vision
Projects
Step-by-step tutorials to solve common real-world
computer vision problems for desktop or mobile, from
augmented reality and number plate recognition to face
recognition and 3D head tracking
Daniel Lélis Baggio
Shervin Emami
David Millán Escrivá
Khvedchenia Ievgen
Naureen Mahmood
Jason Saragih
Roy Shilkrot
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Mastering OpenCV with Practical Computer
Vision Projects
Copyright © 2012 Packt Publishing
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First published: December 2012
Production Reference: 2231112
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-84951-782-9
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Cover Image by Neha Rajappan (neha.rajappan1@gmail.com)
Credits
Authors
Daniel Lélis Baggio
Shervin Emami
David Millán Escrivá
Khvedchenia Ievgen
Naureen Mahmood
Jason Saragih
Roy Shilkrot
Reviewers
Kirill Kornyakov
Luis Díaz Más
Sebastian Montabone
Acquisition Editor
Usha Iyer
Lead Technical Editor
Ankita Shashi
Technical Editors
Sharvari Baet
Prashant Salvi
Copy Editors
Brandt D'Mello
Aditya Nair
Alda Paiva
Project Coordinator
Priya Sharma
Proofreaders
Chris Brown
Martin Diver
Indexer
Hemangini Bari
Tejal Soni
Rekha Nair
Graphics
Valentina D'silva
Aditi Gajjar
Production Coordinator
Arvindkumar Gupta
Cover Work
Arvindkumar Gupta
About the Authors
Daniel Lélis Baggio started his work in computer vision through medical image
processing at InCor (Instituto do Coração – Heart Institute) in São Paulo, where
he worked with intra-vascular ultrasound image segmentation. Since then, he has
focused on GPGPU and ported the segmentation algorithm to work with NVIDIA's
CUDA. He has also dived into six degrees of freedom head tracking with a natural
user interface group through a project called ehci (http://code.google.com/p/
ehci/
). He now works for the Brazilian Air Force.
I'd like to thank God for the opportunity of working with computer
vision. I try to understand the wonderful algorithms He has created
for us to see. I also thank my family, and especially my wife, for all
their support throughout the development of the book. I'd like to
dedicate this book to my son Stefano.
Shervin Emami (born in Iran) taught himself electronics and hobby robotics
during his early teens in Australia. While building his rst robot at the age of 15,
he learned how RAM and CPUs work. He was so amazed by the concept that
he soon designed and built a whole Z80 motherboard to control his robot, and
wrote all the software purely in binary machine code using two push buttons
for 0s and 1s. After learning that computers can be programmed in much easier
ways such as assembly language and even high-level compilers, Shervin became
hooked to computer programming and has been programming desktops, robots,
and smartphones nearly every day since then. During his late teens he created
Draw3D (http://draw3d.shervinemami.info/), a 3D modeler with 30,000 lines
of optimized C and assembly code that rendered 3D graphics faster than all the
commercial alternatives of the time; but he lost interest in graphics programming
when 3D hardware acceleration became available.
