TABLE OF CONTENTS The purpose of this chapter is to give the reader a fairly clear idea about the scientific content of the book. All of the themes that will be developed in this study, using the necessary mathematical formalism, already appear in this overture. It is written with a concern for simplicity and clarity and avoids as much as possible the use of formulas and symbols.
Signal and image processing ultimately involve a collection of numerical techniques, or algorithms. But like all other scientific disciplines, signal and image processing assume certain preliminary scientific conventions. We have sought in this first chapter to describe the intellectual architecture underlying the algorithmic constructions that will be presented in other parts of the book.
Signal processing has become an essential and ubiquitous part of contemporary scientific and technological activity, and the signals that need to be processed appear in most sectors of modern life. Signal processing is used in telecommunications (telephone and television), in the transmission and analysis of satellite images, and in medical imaging (echography, tomography, and nuclear magnetic resonance), all of which involve the analysis, storage or transmission, and synthesis of complex time series. Signal processing occurs in most late-model automobiles, typically for some monitoring or control function. The record of a stock price is a signal, and so is a record of temperature readings that permit the analysis of climatic variations and the study of global warming.
Does there exist a definition of a signal that is appropriate...
