  A variety of operations of cellular automata on gray images is presented. All
operations are of a wave-front nature finishing in a stable state. They are
used to extract shape descripting gray objects robust to a variety of pattern
distortions. Topographic terms are used: "lakes", "dales", "dales of dales". It
is shown how mutual object relations like "above" can be presented in terms of
gray image analysis and how it can be used for character classification and for
gray pattern decomposition. Algorithms can be realized with a parallel
asynchronous architecture. Keywords: Pattern Recognition, Mathematical
Morphology, Cellular Automata, Wave-front Algorithms, Gray Image Analysis,
Topographical Shape Descriptors, Asynchronous Parallel Processors, Holes,
Cavities, Concavities, Graphs.
