The image has been building for well over a year now in the minds of the Mets, their fans and, arguably most of all, Matt Harvey himself:

The power right-hander motors in from the bullpen, reclaims the mound as his throne and picks up where he left off, dazzling opposing hitters with his array of nasty pitches and sparking the Mets to their long-awaited revitalization.

The reality test of that image approaches — in multiple, escalating segments. Mets pitchers and catchers will hold their first official workout Feb. 21, followed by their Grapefruit League opener March 4 (at the Braves) and Opening Day on April 6 (at the Nationals).

Harvey’s participation in each of these steps, most of all the last one, will generate buzz largely unseen in Mets circles since Bernie Madoff’s 2008 arrest rocked their universe.

So as we stand at the precipice of this reboot, it’s worth wondering: How realistic is it for Harvey, who turns 26 next month, to pick up where he left off before he tore the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, necessitating Tommy John surgery?

“The expectations of what the pitcher can do the next season [after the surgery] have limits,” Scott Boras, Harvey’s agent, said in a recent interview, “limits that may not be necessary the year following the surgery.”

“The myth out there is that it’s 100-percent successful, which it’s not,” orthopedist James Andrews, who performed Harvey’s surgery on Oct. 22, 2013, told the YES Network recently. “The basic statistics are about 85-percent successful back to the same level. But if you look at major league pitchers, only about 75 percent of those actually make it back to the major leagues.”

Mets general manager Sandy Alderson said in November that the team would work with Harvey to control his innings, and Harvey later expressed his support for such a plan — he threw 178 1/3 innings in his 2013 season that was cut short by his elbow injury.

That blueprint could manifest itself in multiple ways: Capitalizing on off days to skip Harvey and keep the rest of the starting rotation on normal rest, or calling up a minor leaguer for a spot start in Harvey’s place, or limiting Harvey to some five-inning starts throughout the season, or just giving him a two-week breather.

“We’re more concerned with his overall condition than the condition of his elbow,” Mets vice president and assistant general manager John Ricco said of Harvey.

The bigger question, however, might not be the quantity of Harvey’s innings. It might be the quality of his innings. He put up a 157 ERA+ in 2013, meaning his production exceeded the league-average pitcher by 57 percent. Is it reasonable to expect him to dominate at that level again, or even come close to it?

“Particularly young baseball pitchers think that if they have this operation, they’ll throw harder with higher velocity than prior to the injury. Statistics show they actually could lose a couple of miles per hour in general with this operation,” Andrews said. “Now, the thing that makes them throw harder, or throw with higher velocity, they get bigger and stronger because of the rehab. Probably not the elbow, though.”

“Whenever you take a year off from pitching and you go through something like this, there is an adjustment period to return to normal,” Boras said. “This is a process, and it’s a first-time process for every pitcher who has it.

“Matt Harvey has extraordinary skills. When a pitcher has extraordinary skills, you’re able to gain a confidence level probably much earlier in the process. Your raw talent works for you. You get results that allow a player to become confident because of your abilities.”

Boras represents another recent NL East dynamo who succumbed quickly to Tommy John surgery. Stephen Strasburg created headlines with his dominance upon arriving with the Nationals in 2010, only to have that rookie campaign cut short by a torn a ligament in his pitching elbow.

After a brief, five-start cameo at the end of the 2011 season, he has gradually ramped up his innings totals — from 159 1/3 in 2012 to 183 in 2013 to 215 last year — while establishing himself as a front-of-the-rotation starter, though he hasn’t quite matched his early promise of eliteness.

One of Strasburg’s Nationals teammates, Jordan Zimmermann, also didn’t make it through his freshman campaign, 2009, without going under the knife. He slowly has become an even better pitcher than Strasburg and stands as one of the most alluring members of next winter’s free-agent class.

Adam Wainwright, best known in these parts as the Cardinals reliever who caught Carlos Beltran looking at a curveball to end the 2006 NLCS in the Mets’ disfavor, went onto become a top NL starter, underwent Tommy John surgery during spring training of 2011, returned as a league-average starter in 2012 and has climbed his way back with each successive year.

His average fastball velocity dropped from 91.1 mph in 2010 to 90.1 in 2012, according to FanGraphs, then shot back up to 91.1 in 2013 and dipped back to 90.2 last year.

“You’re not going to have good days all the time,” said longtime closer Billy Wagner, who underwent Tommy John surgery while under Mets employ in September 2008. “You’re fighting that head game: ‘Why doesn’t it feel the way it should? Should it feel this way?’ You watch a lot of the younger kids, and they’re apprehensive after their first surgery.”

Harvey, who complained multiple times last year about the Mets’ (and Boras’) deliberate timeline for his return, would have loved Wagner’s aggressive return.

At age 38, he pushed himself to get back for the 2009 season and made his first appearance with the Mets on Aug. 20, less than a year after going under the knife.

The Mets traded him to the Red Sox for the playoff drive, and in all, Wagner pitched very well, compiling a 1.72 ERA in 17 appearances, but an 18.00 ERA in two postseason games.

In 2010, however, Wagner closed out his career with a bang, putting together a spectacular 1.43 ERA and 4.73 strikeouts-to-walks ratio in 71 games for the Braves. Having enjoyed a full winter of rest, after the rush to get back on the mound in ’09, saw his average fastball tick up to 95.7 mph in 2010 after registering 94.2 in ’09.

“I did feel better, I think that’s to be expected,” Wagner said. “You go through that first year back, I probably had been rehabbing for 10 straight months just to get back to pitch that last month and a half. I felt rebuilt. When I came back [for 2010], it was almost like I was 24 again, body-wise.”

Harvey’s case differs in he did get some downtime this winter, after working his way up to mound sessions at Citi Field last September.

“All of the doctors agree that anyone who goes through a Tommy John surgery and comes back and pitches the first year, how soon he pitches after the surgery is relevant,” Boras said.

Assuming Harvey pitches in the first week of the regular season, he will be over 17 months post-op.

Then again, “Each one is a different case,” Ricco noted. You can try to find comparables, and you can share experiences, but each post-Tommy John case represents its own journey.

The Mets, their medical director David Altchek, Harvey and Boras have communicated steadily about the many moving parts involved in this launch.

They all must navigate the tightrope between excitement and patience, all the more so because the Mets want to post their first winning season since 2008 while deploying one of the lower payrolls in the industry. Ricco used words like “slow” and “steady” in discussing the team’s hopes for Harvey.

“Harvey’s a big kid,” said Wagner, now the head baseball coach at Miller School in Virginia. “I don’t think he’ll have one bit of problem, hopefully.”

Then he noted that two of his 2010 Braves teammates, Brandon Beachy and Kris Medlen, both wound up undergoing the procedure for the second time last year.

The image of Harvey’s triumphant return might prove to be a vision fulfilled. It could be an unrealized fantasy. If it falls somewhere in the middle — let’s say, Harvey being a very good but not great pitcher and staying on the mound and out of the operating room — then the Mets probably should consider that a victory.