Image Formation and Data Processing

For the past several years, computer speeds have tended to double every year. This is an exponential growth curve, and the cumulative gain is impressive: programs running for a day 10 years ago now require a minute. This allows algorithm designers to follow new strategies. Ingenious mathematics and clever numerical analysis now must face competition from inefficient and ugly brute-force computations, and soon will no longer be necessary. An important advantage is that problems which cannot be solved analytically can now be tackled with computation-intensive numerical procedures.