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The technological developments of the last ten years have made com puter graphics and image processing by computer popular. Pictorial pat tern recognition has also shown significant progress. Clearly, there exist overlapping interests among the three areas of research. Graphic displays are of concern to anyone involved in image processing or pic torial pattern recognition and many problems in graphics require methodologies from image processing for their solutions. The data structures used in all three areas are similar. It seems that there is a common body of knowledge underlying all three areas, pictorial informa tion processing by computer. The novelty of these fields makes it difficult to design a course or to a write a book covering their basic concepts. Some of the treatises on graphics focus on the hardware and methods of current interest while treatises on image processing often emphasize applications and classical signal processing. The fast evolution of technology causes such material to lose its relevance. For example, the development of optical fibers has reduced the importance of bandwidth compression.

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