The last
two decades have witnessed a revolutionary development in the field of
biomedical and diagnostic imaging. Imaging procedures and modalities which were
only in the experimental research phase in the early part of the last two
decades, have now become universally accepted clinical procedures. They include
computerized tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging, ultrasound imaging,
nuclear medicine imaging, computerized hematological cell analysis, etc. In the
past, the conventional and relatively simple image processing techniques such
as image enhancement, gray-level mapping, spectral analysis, region extraction,
etc. have been modified for biomedical images and successfully applied for
processing and analysis. The role of image enhancement, gray-level mapping, and
image reconstruction from projections algorithms in CT and other radiological
imaging modalities is well evident. Recently, many advances in biomedical image
processing, analysis, and understanding algorithms have shown a great potential
for enhancing and interpreting useful diagnostic information from these images
more accurately.