I am looking for a good introduction to the wavelet transform, particularly in the context of image processing. I am very comfortable with the Fourier transforms, and I've got a good background in applied math (undergraduate physics degree, masters in optics, and significant professional experience in image processing and various other number crunching tasks).
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find an introduction to the topic that suits me. There is a lot of literature on the topic in a pure math context, which I can handle if I need to but not in a time-efficient manner. Other references are more applied, but either assume existing knowledge of wavelets, or fail to give any mathematical background whatsoever, and skip directly to "cookbook" style descriptions of wavelet applications, such as image compression.
Can anybody recommend some references that would help me?
If you read French, I would suggest the book Séries de Fourier et ondelettes, Jean-Pierre Kahane, Pierre Gilles Lemarié-Rieusset. ISBN 2-84225-001. See this.