This is the twenty-second one in the annual survey series of the yearly important bibliographies on image engineering in China. The purpose of this statistic and analysis work is mainly to capture the up-to-date development of image engineering in China

to provide a targeted means of literature searching facility for readers working in related areas

and to supply a useful recommendation for the editors of journals and potential authors of papers. Considering the wide distribution of related publications in China

728 references on image engineering research and technique are selected carefully from 2 938 research papers published in 148 issues of a set of 15 Chinese journals. These 15 journals are considered as important journals in which papers concerning image engineering have higher quality and are relatively concentrated. Those selected references are classified first into 5 categories (image processing

image analysis

image understanding

technique application and survey)

and then into 23 specialized classes according to their main contents (same as the last 11 years). Some analysis and discussions about the statistics made on the results of classifications by journal and by category are also presented

respectively. According to the analysis on the statistics in 2016

it seems that image analysis is getting the most attention

the number of publications on target tracking remains at a high level

image segmentation and edge detection are still a focus of research

the image matching and fusion in remote sensing

mapping and other applications continuously are a hot spot

the applications of bio-medical images have a significant increase this year. This work shows a general and off-the-shelf picture of the various progresses

either for depth or for width

of image engineering in China in 2016.