Starting from the basics of computer vision and OpenCV, we'll take you all the way to creating exciting applications. You will discover that, though computer vision is a challenging subject, the ideas and algorithms used are simple and intuitive, and you will appreciate the abstraction layer that OpenCV uses to do the heavy lifting for you. Packed with many examples, the book will help you understand the main data structures used within OpenCV, and how you can use them to gain performance boosts. Next we will discuss and use several image processing algorithms such as histogram equalization, filters, and color space conversion. You then will learn about image gradients and how they are used in many shape analysis techniques such as edge detection, Hough Line Transform, and Hough Circle Transform. In addition to using shape analysis to find things in images, you will learn how to describe objects in images in a more robust way using different feature detectors and descriptors. By the end of this book, you will be able to make intelligent decisions using the famous Adaboost learning algorithm.