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Many properties of biological materials can be visualized directly using microscopy, electrophoresis, or other visualization mechanisms. The image subjects may have been improved before digital image capture using various detection-enhancement methods (such as stains, dyes, autoradiography, phase-contrast, interference microscopy, etc.) to visualize the data of interest. Digital image processing (see wikipedia.org  and dictionary.com  entries) is a method for the separation, detection, and quantification of the objects of interest in biological materials. Quantified data helps scientists perform more rigorous analyses of their biological experiments and improve the conclusions of their analyses.

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The RTPP project was conceived and initiated by Dr. Lewis "Lew" Lipkin, M.D., head of the Image Processing Unit, later the Image Processing Section (IPS), in the the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The intellectual concept behind computer-controlled microscopy started in 1962 when Lew was an assistant professor of neuropathology at Downstate Medical Center in New York. Professor Patrick Fitzgerald, Chairman of the Pathology Department at Downstate, was studying pancreatic cell growth. Dr. Vinichaichol, who was doing visual grain counts on thin pancreatic sections, was finding mixed results. The problem was statistical. Dr. Lipkin was asked to design a proper sampling technique. Grain counting was  Grain counting was a method used to measure cell metabolism before the days of antibody techniques applied to living cells and fluorescent techniques that came about during our time in NIH. Lew, who happened to know something about statistics, was asked by Dr. Fitzgerald to find out what was wrong with his statistics. After some thought, Lew realized that Dr. Vinichaichol was staying in one area of the slide and he had no way of knowing when he was recounting the same cells. Lew didn't want to continue looking at biological material that he couldn't explore without using some form of quantification.

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