The purpose of this book is to study the process of image development, to see how it may be formalized and partially or fully automated. The book examines many of the difficult theoretical issues associated with this process, and then describes a working system which can automatically find solutions to simple image processing patterns in a reasonably efficient manner. The most important features of the book are that it links together image processing with AI; it is the first book to apply automatic programming techniques and expert systems to the problems of image algorithm development and mathematical morphology; it provides a concise yet fairly complete and readable introduction to mathematical morphology; it uses algebraic languages to express image algorithms; it describes the image algorithm development process from a human, as well as from a formal, viewpoint; the automatic search described achieves a 300:1 speedup over an equivalent exhaustive search. Readers can expect to derive a better understanding of mathematical morphology, and of the process and difficulties associated with image algorithm development.