Raster scanning is a process used in television and computer graphics where an image is captured and reconstructed by systematically scanning across it in horizontal lines from top to bottom. Each line, called a scan line, is transmitted as an analog signal or divided into discrete pixels. Pixels are stored in a refresh buffer and then "painted" onto the screen one row at a time, with the beam returning to the left side during horizontal retrace and to the top left for vertical retrace between frames. Raster scanning provides realistic images but at the cost of lower resolution compared to random scanning systems.