Methods and apparatus for providing dynamic signal processing with, in one exemplary embodiment, a fast swipe image scanner. Dynamic signal processing comprises determining the rate of motion of a dataform, for example a barcode, which is passed in front of the scanner's data collection module. Then, based on the rate of motion, applying a signal processing method to the dataform. The complexity of the selected signal processing method used to decode the dataform can be chosen based on the detected rate of motion of the dataform. In alternate embodiments two or more algorithms are processes concurrently.