A raster scan, or raster scanning, is the rectangular pattern of image capture and reconstruction in television. By analogy, the term is used for raster graphics, the pattern of image storage and transmission used in most computer bitmap image systems. The word raster comes from the Latin word rastrum (a rake), which is derived from radere (to scrape); see also rastrum, an instrument for drawing musical staff lines. The pattern left by the lines of a rake, when drawn straight, resembles the parallel lines of a raster: this line-by-line scanning is what creates a raster. It is a systematic process of covering the area progressively, one line at a time. Although often a great deal faster, it is similar in the most-general sense to how one's gaze travels when one reads lines of text. A raster scan, or raster scanning, is the rectangular pattern of image capture and reconstruction in television. By analogy, the term is used for raster graphics, the pattern of image storage and transmission used in most computer bitmap image systems. The word raster comes from the Latin word rastrum (a rake), which is derived from radere (to scrape); see also rastrum, an instrument for drawing musical staff lines. The pattern left by the lines of a rake, when drawn straight, resembles the parallel lines of a raster: this line-by-line scanning is what creates a raster. It is a systematic process of covering the area progressively, one line at a time. Although often a great deal faster, it is similar in the most-general sense to how one's gaze travels when one reads lines of text. In a raster scan, an image is subdivided into a sequence of (usually horizontal) strips known as 'scan lines'. Each scan line can be transmitted in the form of an analog signal as it is read from the video source, as in television systems, or can be further divided into discrete pixels for processing in a computer system. This ordering of pixels by rows is known as raster order, or raster scan order. Analog television has discrete scan lines (discrete vertical resolution), but does not have discrete pixels (horizontal resolution) – it instead varies the signal continuously over the scan line. Thus, while the number of scan lines (vertical resolution) is unambiguously defined, the horizontal resolution is more approximate, according to how quickly the signal can change over the course of the scan line.