This is the twentieth in the annual survey series of the yearly bibliographies on image engineering in China. The purpose of this survey work is mainly to capture the up-to-date development of image engineering in China

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

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

822 references on image engineering research and technique are selected carefully from 3 103 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 9 years). Some analysis and discussions about the statistics made on the results of classifications by journal and by category are also presented

respectively. Besides

taking this opportunity the 12 126 references on image engineering research and technique

selected from 50 478 research papers published in past 20 years

are divided into four “five-year” periods

and a comparative analysis for the selection of papers concerning image engineering as well as for the numbers of selected references belonging to each category and each class is conducted. According to the analysis on the statistics in 2014

it seems that image techniques for enhancement and restoration are still obtaining many attentions

image segmentation is yet a focus in image analysis

the numbers of references on image acquisition increases a lot

and image matching and fusion as well as their applications in remote sensing and survey mapping become a hot point again. Following the comparison of all statistics in 20 years

it can find that the numbers of references for 7 classes are almost increasing every year

3 classes are about decreasing progressively recently

while other classes are changing with ups and downs. 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 2014. The statistics for 20 years provides even more complete and reliable information for the tendency and development.