Image Acquisitionand Proces

Acknowledgments
My gratitude goes out to all of the people at CRC Press LLC who have held my
hand through the production of this book. SpeciÞcally, thanks to Nora Konopka, my
Acquisitions Editor, who showed immense faith in taking on and internally promoting
this project; Helena Redshaw, my Editorial Project Development Supervisor,
who kept me on the right track during the book’s development; and Sylvia Wood,
my Project Editor, who worked closely with me to convert my ramblings into
comprehensible format.
The user solutions featured were written by some very talented LabVIEW and
Vision specialists from around the world, most of whom I found lurking either on
the Info-LabVIEW Mailing List (http://www.info-labview.org), or the NI-Zone Discussion
Forum (http://www.zone.ni.com). Theoretical descriptions of the Vision
capabilities of LabVIEW are all very well, but it is only when you build a program
that ties the individual functionalities together to form a useful application that you
realize the true value of their use. I hope their stories help you to see the big picture
(pun intended), and to realize that complete solutions can be created around core
Vision components. Thank you for the stories and examples showing some of the
real-world applications achievable using the techniques covered in the book.
A big thank you goes out to my two very talented reviewers, Edward Lipnicki
and Peter Badcock, whose knowledge of theory often overshadowed my scientiÞc
assumptions — this book would not be anywhere near as comprehensive without
your help. Thanks also to my proofreaders, Adam Batten, Paul Conroy, Archie
Garcia, Walter Kalceff, James McDonald, Andrew Parkinson, Paul Relf, Anthony
Rochford, Nestor Sanchez, Gil Smith, Glen Trudgett and Michael Wallace, who
helped me correct most (hopefully) of the mistakes I made in initial manuscripts.
The section on application lighting is based primarily on information and images
I gathered from NER (a Robotic Vision Systems Incorporated company) — thank
you to Greg Dwyer from the Marketing Communications group for assisting me in
putting it all together. Further information regarding NER’s extensive range of
industrial lighting products can be found at their Web site (http://www.nerlite.com).
I could not have dreamed of writing this book without the assistance of my local
National Instruments staff, Jeremy Carter (Australia and New Zealand Branch Manager)
and Alex Gouliaev (Field Sales Engineer). Your product-related assistance and
depth of knowledge of NI products and related technologies were invaluable and
nowhere short of astounding.
My apologies to my family, my friends and all of my English teachers. This
book is pitched primarily to readers in the United States, so I have had to abandon
many of the strict rules of English spelling and grammar that you tried so hard to
instill in me. I hope that you can forgive me.