Digital image processing: a path to better pictures.

Digital image processing has been used for over a decade to provide startling improvements in the quality of photographs from deep space, satellites and low light level photography. In the last decade considerable work has gone on in major microscope labs in applying these techniques to electron micrographs. Within the last few years a number of factors have come together which allow large scale image processing techniques to be applied at reasonable costs in microscope labs everywhere. The system described here provides hardware for digitization and storage of multiple images simultaneously and multimode scan generation. System software provides easy scan control, image digitization, automatic prescale adjust on acquisition, grey scale histogram generation, grey scale manipulation, image filtering, smoothing, and random color assignment to grey levels.