Until very recently, the integration of image-processing systems required considerable expense for the acquisition of specialized hardware, in addition to a major programming effort. As a consequence, image processing has been accessible only to a minority of privileged researchers. With the recent advent of powerful personal computers such as the Macintosh II, this situation is bound to change dramatically. Although such computers offer low-cost hardware configurations for simple image-processing tasks, their programming using conventional techniques is notoriously difficult, due to the high level of sophistication of the user interface. The main purpose of this project was to devise powerful development tools to facilitate the development of specialized image-processing software for such workstations. The first step was to create a simple image-processing shell which is extremely easy to modify for creating specialized applications; the main feature is that all complex interactions with the user interface are handled automatically, and that the programmer need only be concerned with the application-specific procedures. The second aspect was to develop a comprehensive set of basic imageprocessing modules. At present, our software library includes about 200 FORTRAN subroutines that perform image-processing tasks such as filtering, edge detection, point transformations, and binary operations.
