In order to practice what you read in this book, you should have access to a computer with an installed version of MATLAB. The screenshots you will see in this book are all taken from MATLAB Version R2012b, which was the most recent one at the time of writing this book. However, since MATLAB is also a programming language, you will not need to worry about any differences in the way R2012b looks compared to earlier versions. The great majority of the things we will cover in this book will be 100 percent compatible with most previous versions. In the rare cases, when we use a brand new functionality, we will also provide alternative solutions for previous versions.

The most important thing to make sure of, however, is that you have to find an installed version of MATLAB that includes at least the two basic toolboxes for image and video processing: Image Processing Toolbox and Image Acquisition Toolbox. An extra toolbox, named Computer Vision Toolbox, will also be used for a very small part of video processing. Toolboxes are collections of ready-made functions for special purposes. For those of you with a little familiarity with programming, they could be thought of as libraries. The more toolboxes included in your installation of MATLAB, the more functionalities the environment will provide for you. Most of our code in this book will be based on basic MATLAB functions included in all installations and the two toolboxes that were mentioned previously.