Image sensing systems, comprised of radiation detectors; signal conditioning circuits; analog and/or digital processors; readout circuits; analog-to-digital converters; interface circuits; and data storage, data retrieval, and data exploitation programs for acquiring and transforming visual information and/or other spatio-temporal patterns into machine-usable and/or human-usable representations, and machine vision systems, comprised of image sensors; image sensing systems comprised of radiation detectors; signal conditioning circuits; analog and/or digital processors; readout circuits; analog-to-digital converters; interface circuits; data storage, data retrieval and data exploitation programs for acquiring and transforming visual information and/or other spatio-temporal patterns into machine-usable and/or human-usable representations; and image synthesizing programs for enabling a machine to perceive and/or measure visual environments, produce conclusions about the visual environments, and convey and/or instruct other machines or humans to act upon the conclusions, and/or monitor or record activities and events in the visual environment or other spatio-temporal patterns