I could not have made it through my Ph.D. studies without the help of my colleagues at CVL. First and foremost I would like to thank my supervisor Per-Erik Forssén for his friendliness and all the valuable guidance. Throughout, he has always been encouraging and open to discuss ideas. I have also enjoyed our supervision meetings, and often certain information has come to light during our discussions. Next, I want to thank my co-supervisor Michael Felsberg who first took me in as a Ph.D. student, or should I say, tricked me into it. Either way, I am glad that he gave me the chance at perusing a Ph.D. degree. I am very thankful for his support and for learning from his knowledge and experience. To both my supervisors I want to express my gratitude for giving me the freedom and the encouragement to explore different topics and ideas. I also want to thank all my collaborators and co-authors for sharing their brilliant ideas and for our interesting discussions. Martin Danelljan for his notation, for inviting me into exciting research projects and for pushing me into taking time-consuming math courses. Fahad Shahbaz Khan for his encouraging attitude and spreading of positive energy during the darkest deadline hours. Andreas Robinson for sharing his programming skills and for patiently helping me with software installations and computer issues. Goutam Bhat for his awesome figures, ability to improve the results and our discussions on football. I am very proud of what we achieved in our joint works. Moreover, I want to thank all of CVL, including past and current members, for the friendly atmosphere at the lab and all the interesting discussions during coffee breaks. I further want to thank Zahra for arranging barbecues and Mikael for hosting board gaming sessions. Hannes, Abdo and Emanuel for their nice company while sharing offices with me. I am also grateful to everyone who joined me for late lunch, even if the only acceptable option was the bad house. Special thanks go to Per-Erik, Gustav, Abdo, and Andreas for helping out with the proofreading of the thesis manuscript. Lastly, I want to thank my family and all my friends for all the support and good times.