Introduction to Image Processing

I. The past. the present . . . and the future It is possible to take the view that ever since it began, the "ancient" branch of physics known as Optics has been concerned with process­ ing images. But since the Nineteen-Thirties increasingly close ties have been forming between Optics, which until then had been largely based on instruments, and the sciences of communication and infor­ mation arising out of mathematics and electronics. Such developments follow naturally, since communication sys