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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  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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Dr. Richard Masland, M.D., the director of the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Blindness (NINDB), invited Lew to join the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1962. Lew was one of perhaps 20 neuropathologists in the country at the time. Later NINDB became the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). NINDB was looking for a neuropathologist for the Perinatal Research Branch (PRB) headed by Dr. Heinz Berendes, M.D. When he first came to NIH, Lew was determined to build something that implemented his ideas of mapping in biological images. He had an original LINC (Laboratory INstrument Computer created at MIT with NIH funding) computer at the time. Later, Lew upgraded this to a Digital Equipment Corporation Image Removed (DEC) LINC-8 Image Removed. The problem: he had a microscope and he had a computer. How could he combine the two?

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