Support of a Biological Image Processing Center

该奖项为新墨西哥州大学的图像处理中心提供资金。NSF以前的一个奖项为购买用于建立该中心的设备提供了资金。这些资金将部分支持工作人员的薪金。将从机构资金和用户费中获得额外支助。该设施服务于大量和越来越多的教师谁有需要的图像处理作为他们的研究计划的一部分。该中心由三个实验室组成，一个通用的凝胶，照片和其他视觉材料的数字分析，一个用于定量荧光显微镜，一个用于电子显微镜。在过去的二十年里，图像处理已经从一种相对粗糙和笨重的技术发展起来，这种技术只适用于天文学、太空计划和非常复杂的电子显微镜中的少数用途。图像处理现在是一种基本工具，对生物学、生物物理学、生物化学和其他研究领域的各种显微技术和其他技术产生重大影响。尽管它们被广泛接受，但图像处理技术仍然需要对计算的相对复杂的理解才能为其用户带来最大的好处。再加上所需计算工具的费用，这意味着图像处理往往超出了可能从其使用中受益的研究人员的智力和经济手段，但对于其研究计划来说，它并不是绝对必要的。通过机构资金、使用费和酌情直接赠款的混合供资的中央设施的存在为这一困难局面提供了解决办法。虽然只有几年的历史，这个设施已经很好的方式来建立自己作为一个重要组成部分的众多研究计划在新墨西哥州的大学。

This award provides funds for the Image Processing Center at the University of New Mexico. A previous NSF award provided funds for the purchase of equipment that was used to set up the center. These funds will provide partial support of staff salaries. Additional support will be obtained from institutional funds and user fees. The facility serves a large and growing number of faculty who have need of image processing as part of their research programs. The center consists of three laboratories, one general purpose for the digital analysis of gels, photographs and other visual materials, one for quantitative fluorescence microscopy, and one for electron microscopy. Over the last twenty years, image processing has developed from a relatively crude and cumbersome technique suitable for only a few uses in astronomy, in the space program and in very sophisticated electron microscopy. Image processing is now a basic tool with significant impact on a variety of microscopic and other techniques in biology, biophysics, biochemistry and other areas of research. Despite their widespread acceptance, image processing techniques still demand relatively sophisticated understanding of computation to be of maximum benefit to their users. When coupled with the expense of the computational tools required, this means that image processing is often beyond the intellectual and financial means of investigators who might benefit from its use, but for whose research programs it is not absolutely essential. The existence of central facilities funded through a mixture of institutional funds, user fees and, where appropriate, direct grants provides a solution to this difficult situation. Though only a few years old, this facility is already well on the way to establishing itself as an important ingredient of numerous research programs at the University of New Mexico.