Advances in Imaging and Electron Physics, Volume 158

The present volume contains six chapters on very different subjects, ranging from the early history of the microscope to mathematical morphology, time lenses, fuzzy sets and electron acceleration. We begin with a study of surface-plasmon-enhanced photoemission and electron acceleration using ultrashort laser pulses by P. Dombi. This is a very young subject and P. Dombi explains in detail what is involved and the physics of these complicated processes.

This is followed by a fascinating article on the development of (light) microscopy by B.J. Ford, with the provocative title 'Did physics matter to the pioneers of microscopy?'

How can an image be decomposed into its various structural and textural components? This is the subject of the chapter by J. Gilles, who provides a very lucid account of recent progress in this area. The mathematical preliminaries, which cover all the newer kinds of wavelets - ridgelets, curve lets and contourlets - form an essential basis on which the remainder reposes.

The fourth chapter, by S. Svensson, brings together two different topics: fuzzy distance transforms and electron tomography. Once again, the opening sections provide a solid mathematical basis for the application envisaged and I am certain that this full introductory account to these techniques will be heavily used.

The next chapter will appeal to mathematical morphologists: here, M. van Droogenbroeck describes the notion of anchors of morphological operators and algebraic openings. This concept is placed in context and the chapter forms a self-contained account of this particular aspect of mathematical morphology.

The volume ends with another new subject, time lenses for optical transmission systems, by D. Yang, S. Kumar and H. Wang. Spatial imaging has a perfect analogy in the time domain and this is exploited for temporal filtering. The authors introduce us to the subject before going more deeply into the possible ways of pursuing this analogy.