Two-dimensionsl image processing is usually used in analysis of the images captured by optical methods. The ability of computers has been remarkably progressed in memory space and processing speed. Three-dimensional image processing is now possible with such computers. It is much faster and easier to analyze three dimensional data using three-dimensional image processing rather than using two-dimensional one.
In this paper, a general purpose program of three-dimensional image processing is developed and it is applied to a photoelastic three-dimensional image with the spatial coordinates (x, y) and the angle θ of the crossed polaroids. This image is obtained by changing the angle of the crossed polaroids. Each two-dimensional image data consists of the isochromatics and isoclinics. The three-dimensional image processing separates isochromatics and isoclinics automatically by processing the data along the third axis θ.