Morphological Image

Processing

ECE533 Digital Image Processing 1

 Morphology

 Morphology
» The branch of biology that deals with the form
and structure of organisms without
consideration of function
 Mathematical Morphology
» Mathematical tool for processing shapes in
image, including boundaries, skeletons, convex
hulls, etc.
» Use of set theoretical approach

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 Set Theory: Definitions and Notations
 SET ()
» A collection of objects
(elements)
 membership ()
» If  is an element (member)
of a set , we write   
 Subset ()
» Let A, B are two sets. If for
every a  A, we also have a 
B, then the set A is a subset
of B, that is, A  B
» If A  B and B  A, then A =
B.
 Empty set ()
ECE533 Digital Image Processing
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 Complement set
» If A  , then its
complement set Ac = {|  
, and A}
 Union ()
» A B = {|  A or  B}
 Intersection ()
» A  B = {|  A and  B}
 Set difference (-)
» B\A = B Ac
» Note that B-A A-B
 Disjoint sets
» A and B are disjoint
(mutually exclusive) if A 
B= 
3
 Set Relations

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 Translation and Reflection

Translation (A)z = { c| c = a + z, for a A }

Reflection: Bˆ  w | w  b, for b  B

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 Logic Operations Between Binary Images

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 Dilation and Erosion

 Dilation
B: structure element
 
A  B  z | Bˆ  A  
z 
 z | Bˆ   A A
z

 Erosion
A  B = {z | (B)z  A}
 Relations
(A  B)c = Ac  Bˆ

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 Example of Dilation

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 Example of Erosion

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 Opening

A  B = (A  B)  B

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 Closing

A  B = (A  B)  B

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 Example: Opening & Closing

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 Finger Print Processing using Opening and
Closing

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 Hit-or-Miss Transformation
for shape detection

(e)

(d)

Figure 9.12 (a) Set A, (b) A window W and the local

Background of X w.r.t. W, W-X. (c) Ac. (d) AX
Intersection of (d) and (e) shows the location
of the origin of X, as desired.
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 Hit-or-Miss Transform

 Denote B1: object, B2: local background of B1, then,

or

 Reason to have a local background:

» Two or more objects are distinct only if they form
disjoint (disconnected) sets. This is guaranteed by
requiring that each object have at least a one-pixel-thick
background around it.

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 Hit-or-Miss Transform

 Previous example does  Hitnmiss.m

not contain don’t care
entries.
 In structure element
» 1 – foreground
» 0 – background
» X – don’t care
 Output is 1 if exact
match of both
foreground and
background pixels.
» +1: foreground
» -1: background
» 0: don’t care
 1  1  1  1  1  1 1 1 1
 0 1 0 . *  1 1  1  0
     1 0 : match
 1 1 1   1 1 1  1 1 1
 1  1  1  1  1  1 1 1 1
 0 1 0 . *  1  1  1  0
      1 0 : not match
 1 1 1   1 1 1  1 1 1

(c) 2003-2006 by Yu Hen Hu ECE533 Digital Image Processing Hitnmiss.m 16

 Morphological Boundary Extraction

(A) = A − (A  B) (9.5-1)
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 Example of Boundary Extraction

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 Region Filling

X k   X k 1  B   Ac ;
k  1, 2, 3, 
Y  Xk  A

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 Region Filling Example

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 Connected Component Extraction

Y: connected component
in set A,
p: a known point in Y
X0  p
X k   X k 1  B   A
if X k  X k 1
then Y  X k

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 Thinning

A  B  A  hitnmiss  A, B 
B  B1 , B 2 ,  B n 
A  B  A  B1  B 2   B n 

Thinning is often accomplished using

a sequence of rotated structuring
elements (a). Given a set A (b),
results of thinning with first element
is shown in (c), and the next 7
elements (d) – (i). There is no
change between 7th and 8th
elements, and no change after first 3
elements. Then it converges to a m-
connectivity.

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 Thickening

AB = A hitnmiss(A,B)
A{B} =((…(AB1) B2) … Bn)

Thickening is the dual of thinning

operation. Usually, thickening a set
A is accomplished by thinning Ac,
and then complement the result.
Then a post-processing prunning
process is applied to remove
disconnected points as shown to
the left.

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 Skeleton

A skeleton of a set A consists of

points z that is the center of a
maximum disk
A maximum disk is a circle in A
that can not be enclosed by
another circle that is also in A.
Figure 9.23. (a) set A, (b), (c) sets
of possible maximum disks. (d)
dotted line is the skeleton.

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 Skeleton Equations

 Define k consecutive erosions of A as:

AkB = ( …(AB)B) …)B) (9.5-13)
Sk(A) = (AkB) − (AkB)B (9.5-12)
 Let K = max{k | (AkB) } (9.5-14)
Then the skeleton can be found as:
K
S ( A)  S k ( A) (9.5-11)
k 1
K
A ( S k ( A)  kB ) (9.5-15)
k 0

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 Illustration of Skeleton Computation

Figure 9.24 Implementation of eq.

(9.5-11)-(9.5-15). The original set is
at the top left and its morphological
skeleton is at the bottom of the 4th
column. The reconstructed set is at
the bottom of the 6th column.

Define k consecutive erosions of A as:

AkB = ( …(AB)B) …)B)
(9.5-13)
Sk(A) = (AkB) − (AkB)B
(9.5-12)
Let K = max{k | (AkB) }
(9.5-14)
Then the skeleton can be found as:

K
S ( A)  S k ( A) (9.5-11)
k 1
K
A ( S k ( A)  kB) (9.5-15)
k 0

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 Pruning

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