Cost reduction and availability of specialized hardware for image processing have made it reasonable to purchase a stand-alone interactive work station for computer aided analysis of micrographs. Some features of such a system are: 1) Ease of selection of points of interest on the micrograph. A cursor can be quickly positioned and coordinates entered with a switch. 2) The image can be nondestructively zoomed to a higher magnification for closer examination and roaming (panning) can be done around the picture. 3) Contrast and brightness of the picture can be varied over a very large range by changing the display look-up tables. 4) Marking items of interest can be done by drawing circles, vectors or alphanumerics on an additional memory plane so that the picture data remains intact. 5) Color pictures can easily be produced. Since the human eye can detect many more colors than gray levels, often a color encoded micrograph reveals many features not readily apparent with a black and white display. Colors can be used to construct contour maps of objects of interest. 6) Publication quality prints can easily be produced by taking pictures with a standard camera of the T.V. monitor screen.
