Appendix A
AnImAl: a Software Environment for Fast Prototyping

The process of developing a computer vision system for a specific task often requires the interactive exploration of several alternative approaches and variants, preliminary parameter tuning, and more. This chapter introduces AnImAl, an image processing package written for the R statistical software system. AnImAl, which relies on an algebraic formalization of the concept of image, supports interactive image processing by adding to images a self documenting capability based on a history mechanism. The documentation facilities of the resulting interactive environment support a practical approach to reproducible research.

keywords: reproducible research, interactive programming environment, R, image algebra.