ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Firstly, I would thank my advisor Prof. K.R.Rao for his invaluable guidance and support, and his tireless guidance, dedication to his students and maintaining new trend in the research areas has inspired me a lot without which this thesis would not have been possible. I also like to thank the other members of my advisory committee Prof. W. Alan Davis and Prof. Kambiz Alavi for reviewing the thesis document and offering insightful comments. I appreciate all members of Multimedia Processing Lab for their support during my research work. This includes Prof. Jung Ho Lee for introducing this topic and helped me in video simulation. I would also like to thank my friends Prasanna Alva, Shreyas Shashidhar, Archana, Thrishala Shetty, Rushikesh, Vinoj, Sanjeev and Siddu Wali and for their comments and suggestions at various stages of my research. Finally, I am grateful to my family; my mother Ms. Jyothi. C. Shetty, my sister Ms. Vidya Shetty, my brother-in-law Santhosh. M. Shetty and my sweet little niece Snigdha Shetty for thei