This paper presents a new scheme for software support of image analysis. It extends the data parallel programming model with the notion of a special data-dependent operand. Thanks to its ability of storing the location of pixel aggregates (connected components), manipulations on multiple image areas can be expressed in terms of whole image transformations. This general model, called the associative net extension, gives programmers flexible ways of handling regions and contours, as shown by a set of examples and it has been implemented on single processor machines to verify its performance and to test its effectiveness in real cases. Implementations on special purpose hardware or multi-processor machines are being tested and look promising, too.