Where is the intelligence in machine vision?

Scene constraints have been defined as the first sub-system component in the generic model of the computerised imaging system presented in the paper. It is a key area in the application of systems engineering principles to the solution of imaging problems. The designer of such systems should have two principle aims when manipulating scene constraints: to maximise the use of prior knowledge of the scene, i.e. by exploiting existing knowledge; and to trivialise the problem of image analysis as far as possible, i.e. by effective imposition of constraints. Both aspects are discussed