Digital image processing, originally established to analyze and improve lunar images, is rapidly growing into a wealth of new applications, due to the enormous technical progress made in computer engineering. At present, the most important fields of growth appear to emerge in the areas of medical image processing (i. e. tomography, thermography), earth resource inventory (i. e. land usage, minerals), office automation (i. e. document storage, retrieval and reproduction) and industrial production (i. e. computer vision for mechanical ro­ bots). Currently, emphasis is being shifted from signal-processing research and design-innovation activities towards cost-efficient system implementations for interactive digital image processing. For the years ahead, trends in computer engineering indicate still further advances in Large Scale Integration (LSI) and Input/Output (I/O) technologies allowing the implementation of powerful parallel and/or distributed processor architectures for real-time processing of high­ resolution achromatic and color images. In view of the many new developments in the field of digital image processing and recognizing the importance of discussing these developments amongst key scientists that might make use of them, ffiM Germany sponsored an international symposium on 'Advances in Digital Image Processing', held at Bad Neuenahr, Federal Republic of Germany, September 26 - 28, 1978. The interest shown in this symposium encouraged the publi­ cation of the papers presented in this volume of the ffiM Research Symposium Series.