Various techniques have been used in Image Processing for the last about thirty years. Most of the techniques are developed for enhancing images obtained from unmanned space crafts, space probes, military reconnaissance flights.

Image processing has been used in almost all the areas such as remote sensing, military, biomedical, industrial applications. The world is growing more crowded all the time, with a fragile environment that needs protection. Natural resources are becoming increasingly precious and hard to find. Remote sensing images are obtained from satellite and aircraft sensors to study the natural resources available on the earth surface. Space probes are flown to other planets such as Mars, Venus, Jupiter etc., to get the images of these planets. Various types of satellites are deputed to get high resolution reconnaissance images for military, applications. All these images require Image Processing to increase contrast to get the information by suppressing the noise signals arising out of platform motion, atmosphere and sensor non-linearities.

With the advent of Image Processing techniques, network processing facilities and high resolution and high speed display work stations, doctors all over the world are able to interpret images of patients transmitted from remote areas for clinical diagnosis. Micro surgery is becoming popular due to the availability of Image Processing techniques to display human parts on 3D display systems.