--- /dev/null
+## Copyright (C) 2000 Kai Habel
+##
+## This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
+## it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
+## the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
+## (at your option) any later version.
+##
+## This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
+## but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+## MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
+## GNU General Public License for more details.
+##
+## You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
+## along with this program; If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
+
+## -*- texinfo -*-
+## @deftypefn {Function File} @var{BW}= im2bw (@var{I},threshold)
+## @deftypefnx {Function File} @var{BW}= im2bw (@var{X},@var{cmap},threshold)
+## Converts image data types to a black-white (binary) image.
+## The treshold value should be in the range [0,1].
+## @end deftypefn
+
+## Author: Kai Habel <kai.habel@gmx.de>
+## Date: 19. March 2000
+
+function BW = im2bw (img, a, b)
+ if (nargin < 2 || nargin > 3)
+ usage("im2bw: number of arguments must be 2 or 3");
+ endif
+
+ ## Convert img to gray scale
+ if (isrgb(img))
+ img = rgb2gray(img);
+ if (nargin != 2)
+ error("im2bw: two input arguments must be given when the image is a color image");
+ endif
+ t = a;
+ elseif (isind (img) && ismatrix(a) && columns (a) == 3)
+ img = ind2gray (img, a);
+ if (nargin != 3)
+ error("im2bw: three input arguments must be given when the image is indexed");
+ endif
+ t = b;
+ elseif (isgray(img))
+ if (nargin != 2)
+ error("im2bw: two input arguments must be given when the image is gray scale");
+ endif
+ t = a;
+ else
+ error ("im2bw: first input argument must be an image");
+ endif
+
+ ## Do the thresholding
+ if (isscalar (t))
+ if (t < 0 || t > 1)
+ error("im2bw: threshold must be in the interval [0, 1]");
+ endif
+ switch (class(img))
+ case {"double", "single"}
+ BW = (img >= t);
+ case {"uint8"}
+ BW = (img >= 255*t);
+ case {"uint16"}
+ BW = (img >= 65535*t);
+ otherwise
+ error("im2bw: unsupport image class");
+ endswitch
+ else
+ error ("im2bw: threshold value must be scalar");
+ endif
+
+endfunction