At the time Rasband began working at the Research Services Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health, part of the intramural campus of the NIH, most scientific data processing was done on mainframe computers and the personal computer revolution was just beginning. There was no image analysis program for the Macintosh computer, and Rasband had just obtained one of the first Mac IIs. Rasband realized that it had the appropriate hardware and low level software to be an ideal base for a small, low-cost image analysis system; all it needed was some software for image analysis. Rasband decided to write that software in support of the imaging analysis needs he saw at the time, chiefly, better access in terms both of ease of adoption and cost.
