The use of computers to improve biomedical image quality

Abstract

Pictorial data have long been an important source of information in medicine and biology, but until quite recently, little use has been made of computers to process this data. Perhaps the major obstacle to such development was the difficulty of getting pictures into and out of the computer. The character recognition systems developed in the fifty's were in general not applicable to biomedical image problems because of the restrictive nature of the input devices. High resolution image scanners with the ability to detect multiple shades of grey were required and while such devices became available in the early sixties, it was difficult to find biomedical applications that would justify their cost which was frequently in the half million dollar range.