It is with great pleasure that I present this fourth vol- ume in the
series "Advanced Applications in Pattern Recognition." It would be
difficult to find two authors better versed in the design and
application of parallel image processing systems, due to both their own
many years of pioneering in the field and their encyclopedic knowledge
of what is going on in uni- versity and industrial laboratories around
the world. The monograph is unique in its parallel presentation of
orthogonal and hexagonal dissections, and the wealth of graphic
illustration of algorithmic procedures for processing and analyz- ing
images in the various known implementations of parallel im-
age-processing architectures. This volume should find a place on the
bookshelf of every practitioner of pattern recognition, image
processing, and compu- ter graphics. Morton Nadler General Editor vii
PREFACE This book endeavors to introduce the reader to the subject of
cellular logic and cellular automata and is devoted particu- larly to
those parts dealing with the manipulation of pictorial data. The study
of cellular automata owes much to the pioneer- ing work of John von
Neumann during the 1950s. Von Neumann was interested in general problems
in the behavior of computing structures and was immensely impressed by
the complexity and performance of the human brain, which he felt must
point to- wards successful designs for automatic computing machines.
