Morphological Image Processing

Dr. Nilamani Bhoi

Associate Professor
Dept. of Electronics and Telecommunication
Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla
 Introduction
– “Morphology “ – a branch in biology that deals with
the form and structure of animals and plants.
– “Mathematical Morphology” – as a tool for
extracting image components, that are useful in the
representation and description of region shape.
– The language of mathematical morphology is – Set
theory.
– Unified and powerful approach to numerous image
processing problems.
– In binary images , the set elements are members of
the 2-D integer space – Z . where each element (x,y) is
a coordinate of a black (or white) pixel in the image.

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 Basic Concepts in Set Theory
• Subset
Morphological Image Processing

• Union

• Intersection

disjoint / mutually exclusive

• Complement
• Difference
• Reflection
• Translation

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 Logic Operations Involving Binary Pixels and
Images
Morphological Image Processing

• The principal logic operations used in image processing

are: AND, OR, NOT (COMPLEMENT).
• These operations are functionally complete.
• Logic operations are preformed on a pixel by pixel basis
between corresponding pixels (bitwise).
• Other important logic operations :
XOR (exclusive OR), NAND (NOT-AND)
• Logic operations are just a private case for a binary set
operations, such : AND – Intersection , OR – Union,
NOT-Complement.

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Morphological Image Processing

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Morphological Image Processing

Morphological Operations

• Basic Morphological Operations

• Dilation
• Erosion
• Opening
• Closing

Positioned image and structuring element are used in morphological operations

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 Structuring Elements
Morphological Image Processing

A structuring element is a shape mask used in

the basic morphological operations.

They can be any shape and size that is

digitally representable, and each has an origin.

box
hexagon disk
something

box(length,width) disk(diameter)

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 Dilation
Morphological Image Processing

• Dilation of A by B: AB

A  B  {z | (Bˆ)z  A  } A B {z | [(Bˆ)z  A]  A}

X  B  p  Z : p  x  b, x  X and b  B
2

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 Dilation
Morphological Image Processing

Dilation expands the connected sets of 1s of a binary image.

It can be used for

1. growing features

2. filling holes and gaps

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 Dilation with Structuring Elements
Morphological Image Processing

The arguments to dilation and erosion are

1. a binary image B
2. a structuring element S

dilate(B,S) takes binary image B, places the origin

of structuring element S over each 1-pixel, and ORs
the structuring element S into the output image at
the corresponding position.

0000 dilate 0110

1
0110 0111
11
0000 0000
S
B origin BS

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 Dilation – Example 1
Morphological Image Processing

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 Dilation – Example 2
Morphological Image Processing

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 Assignment-XI
Morphological Image Processing

Perform Dilation operation on image A with structuring element B

0 0 0 0 0

0 0 1 0 0

A= 0 1 1 0 0

0 0 1 1 0

0 0 0 0 0

1 1 0

1 1 0
B=
1 0 0

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 Erosion
Morphological Image Processing

• Erosion of A by B: A B

A B = {z | (B)z  A}.

XB  p  Z 2 : p  x  b  X b  B

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 Erosion
Morphological Image Processing

Erosion shrinks the connected sets of 1s of a binary image.

It can be used for

1. shrinking features

2. Removing bridges, branches and small protrusions

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 Erosion with Structuring Elements
Morphological Image Processing

erode(B,S) takes a binary image B, places the origin

of structuring element S over every pixel position, and
ORs a binary 1 into that position of the output image only if
every position of S (with a 1) covers a 1 in B.

origin
0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 erode
0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0
1
0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0
1
1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0

B S B S
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 Erosion – Example 1
Morphological Image Processing

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 Erosion – Example 2
Morphological Image Processing

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 Opening and Closing
Morphological Image Processing

• Opening: Erosion followed by Dilation

• Opening A by B: A ○ B = (A B)  B
• Smoothes Contours, Breaks narrow bridges,
Eliminates thin protrusions

• Closing: Dilation followed by Erosion

• Closing A by B: A ● B = (A  B) B
• Smoothing, Closes small holes and channels

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 Opening and Closing with Structuring Element
Morphological Image Processing

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 Opening: Example 1
Morphological Image Processing

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 Opening: Example 1
Morphological Image Processing

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 Closing: Example 2
Morphological Image Processing

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 Closing: Example 2
Morphological Image Processing

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 Thank You

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