Vision is perhaps the most important of the human senses. It provides us, seemingly effortlessly, with a detailed 3D description of a complex and rapidly changing world. Computer vision, the study of enabling computers to understand and interpret visual information from static images and video sequences, emerged in the late 1950s and early 60s and is expanding rapidly throughout the world. It belongs to the broader field of image-related computation and relates to areas such as image processing, robot vision, medical imaging, image databases, pattern recognition, computer graphics, and virtual reality.

During the past ten years, computer vision has grown from a research area to a widely accepted technology, capable of providing dramatic increase in productivity and improving living standard. The key factors that have contributed to this growth are the exponential growth of processor speed and memory capacity. Computer vision is a source of powerful tools for industry and other disciplines, including multimedia, robotics, manufacturing, medicine, and remote sensing. The potential practical benefits of computer vision systems are immense. It is anticipated that computer vision systems will soon become commonplace, and that vision technology will be applied across a broad range of products, revolutionizing our lives.