pacos, (pattern considering system) was first developed for the description of the structure of nuclear fuels. this eliminated the long and toilsome manual labour required to obtain the necessary data. determining the distribution of the grain sizes in a sintered material is another application of this system. various methods of improving the presentation of the samples are mentioned. a description of the pacos system with its camera, computers, storage and logic units is provided. when examining modern textiles the superimposition of knots in the picture can falsify the length of the fibres. these knots can be eliminated by method similar to those used for examining sintered materials. by using pacos to examine the activity of fish larvae the extent to which the atmosphere is chemically polluted can be detected. the precise determination of diffusion coefficients is essential in polymer chemistry and in biochemistry. this article explains how pacos evaluates the striations, produced by a high speed centrifuge, required to provide the coefficients. means of determining hardness of welded seams and of providing industrial robots with vision are finally mentioned