Advances in Imaging and Electron Physics, Volume 107

In this volume, we find surveys on the study of quantum dots, distributed feedback lasers, image analysis techniques for electron micrographs, hexagonal sampling, and pattern recognition.

Volume begins with an account of a procedure that sheds light on the transmission properties of open quantum dots, which are quasi-zero-dimensional semiconductor structures. The physics of these new and still imperfectly understood phenomena is examined here by J.P. Bird, R. Akis, D.K. Ferry, and M. Stopa.

In the second chapter, M.F. Alam and M.A. Karim describe external optical feedback effects in distributed feedback semiconductor lasers.

We now turn to electron microscopy. Digital image processing is highly developed in this field, with numerous software packages available, ranging from all-purpose suites to those designed for specific tasks. Nevertheless, areas remain for which no suitable software has been developed. Now that electron microscopy has moved out of the purely qualitative phase (in which conclusions were based on visual scrutiny of electron micrographs) into the quantitative era, such gaps are rapidly being filled and the chapter by A. Rosenauer and D. Gerthsen is a good example of this development.

All the books on image processing mention the advantages of hexagonal sampling over the standard square-grid technique, but none provide a thorough discussion of hexagonal sampling with examples of the hardware requirements. Here is included chapter by R.C. Staunton, who has long advocated the use of this sampling pattern.

The final contribution, by J. Wood, is concerned with a central problem of pattern recognition: how can pattern classifiers be designed in such a way that they are insensitive to certain kinds of transformation of the input data?