Morphology

Abstract

In this chapter one important branch of neighborhood processing algorithms is presented, namely mathematical morphology—or simply morphology. Morphology is primarily applied to binary images in order to remove binary noise, but is can also have other purposes. It is related to correlation in the sense that a kernel (here denoted a structuring element) is applied to each image part. In the chapter the description of morphology and its applications are divided into three levels. At the first level the two basic operations, Hit and Fit, can be found. On top of them are built Dilation and Erosion, which basically expands or shrinks the number of white pixels in the binary image, respectively. Exactly how is dependent on the content of the structuring element. At the third level the compound operations are located. They are combinations of the erosion and dilation operations. In the chapter three such operations are presented; Opening, Closing and Boundary Detection.