Digital image processing is a fascinating subject in several aspects. Human beings perceive most of the information about their environment through their visual sense. While for a long time images could only be captured by photography, we are now at the edge of another technological revolution which allows image data to be captured, manipulated, and evaluated electronically with computers. With breathtaking pace, computers are becoming more powerful and at the same time less expensive, so that widespread applications for digital image processing emerge. In this way, image processing is becoming a tremendous tool to analyze image data in all areas of natural science. For more and more scientists digital image processing will be the key to study complex scientific problems they could not have dreamed to tackle only a few years ago. A door is opening for new interdisciplinary cooperations merging computer science with the corresponding research areas. Many students, engineers, and researchers in all natural sciences are faced with the problem of needing to know more about digital image processing. This book is written to meet this need. The author- himself educated in physics- describes digital image processing as a new tool for scientific research. The book starts with the essentials of image processing and leads - in selected areas - to the state-of-the art. This approach gives an insight as to how image processing really works.