ABSTRACT
The distinction between image processing, which has occupied the preceding five chap-ters, and image analysis lies in the extraction of information, especially quantitative measurements, from the image. As previously mentioned, image processing, like word processing or food processing, is the science of rearrangement. Pixel values may be altered according to neighboring pixel brightnesses or shifted to another location by image warping, but the result is still an array of pixels. So in word processing it is possible to cut and paste paragraphs, perform spell-checking, or alter type styles without reducing the volume of text. And food processing is also an effort at the rearrangement and application of heat to ingredients to produce a more palatable mixture, not to convert it to a list of those ingredients. Image analysis, by contrast, attempts to find those descriptive parameters, usually numeric, that succinctly represent the information of importance in the image, which is more like having the recipe for the dish rather than the food itself.
