随着传统图像信息处理技术的日趋成熟，寻求基于新理论和新思想的图像信息处理技术具有十分重要的理论意义和实用价值。为了使图像处理中的新理论——灰色理论更多地被人们所了解，首先简要介绍了灰色理论的研究内容、主要特点和基础理论；然后分别从图像处理、图像分析和图像理解3个层次来综述和分析灰色理论在图像工程中的研究进展，包括一些新的研究成果；最后，总结了在图像工程中应用灰色理论时，要解决的关键问题和未来的发展方向。研究结果显示，尽管灰色理论在图像工程中的应用研究还处于起步阶段，但其应用范围却几乎涉及了图像工程的各个方面，这充分显示它的广泛可行性、有效性，以及良好的发展潜力和应用前景。

With the increasing maturity of traditional image information processing, from the pointof theories and utilities, it is of great importance for researchers to find new theories and new ideas based technology. First, this paper briefly introduces the research contents, main characteristics and basic theories of grey theory. Then the state-of-artofgrey theory in image engineering is summarized and analyzed in three levels: image processing, image analysis and image understanding. In addition, some research fruits of the authors are reported. Finally, some key issues and perspectives of grey theory in image engineering are pointed out. Research conclusions show that in spite of a new theory in image engineering, grey theory is feasible, efficient and almost covers all the fields of image engineering.