CHAPTER 5

MORPHOLOGICAL BINARY
IMAGE PROCESSING
Eng. Hamza Hassan Karshe
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering
SOMALI NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
Gaheyr Campus
Images taken from:
R. Gonzalez and R. Woods. Digital Image Processing, Prentice Hall, 2008.
Digital Image Processing course by Brian Mac Namee, Dublin Institute of Technology.
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MACHINE VISION
Morphological Binary Image
Processing

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 MORPHOLOGICAL BINARY IMAGE
PROCESSING
 Morphological image processing (or morphology) describes a range
of image processing techniques that deal with the shape (or
morphology) of features in an image.
 Morphological operations are typically applied to remove
imperfections introduced during segmentation or we can say
that morphology is a branch of biology that deals with the forms
and the structure of animals and plants.

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 MORPHOLOGICAL BINARY IMAGE
PROCESSING
 Known as mathematical morphology

 Used to extract image components that are useful in the

representation and description of region shape such as:
• Boundaries extraction
• Skeletons
• Convex hull
• Morphological filtering
• Thinning
• Pruning

 Goal of morphology operations are simplify image data, preserve

essential shape characteristics and eliminate noise.

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Basic Set Theory

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Logic Operations

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Example: Logic Operations

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 Structuring element (SE)
 Structuring element (s.e.) is a shape, used to probe or interact
with a given image, with the purpose of drawing conclusions on
how this shape fits or misses the shapes in the image.
 It is typically used in morphological operations, such as
dilation, erosion, opening, and closing, as well as the hit-or-miss
transform.

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 Basic Morphological Operations

• Erosion

• Dilation

• combine to keep general shape but

smooth with respect to
– Opening object
– Closing background

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How structuring elements are
used in morphology

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 Erosion
 Does the structuring element fit the set?
 Erosion: set of points z, such that structuring
element (S.E.) B translated by z fits fully
inside A.
A  B  {z|(B)z  A}
al Set
gin
Ori
r ing Find me all the
shrink the object
u
t ruct ent locations, where
S em
El S.E translating by
z, will fit inside
the original shape
fully. 11
Erosion

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Erosion

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Erosion

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Erosion

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 Dilation

• Does the structuring element hit the set?

• Dilation: set of points z, such that structuring
element (S.E.) B translated by z, the origin
overlaps on set A.
A  B  {z|( Bˆ )z  A  Φ}
al Set
Or igin Find me all the
u c
ri
tu t
ng pixels, such that Grow the object
Str emen shifted S.E. B by z
El has any overlap with
the original set A. 16
Dilation

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Dilation

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 Dilation

B = structuring element

A  B  {z|( Bˆ )z  A  Φ} 19
Dilation : Bridging gaps

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 Useful

• Erosion
– removal of structures of certain shape and
size, given by SE
• Dilation
– filling of holes of certain shape and size,
given by SE

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 Combining erosion and
dilation
 WANTED:
– remove structures / fill holes
– without affecting remaining parts

 SOLUTION:
• combine erosion and dilation
• (using same SE)

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 Combining Erosion & Dilation :
eliminating irrelevant detail and
restoring
Example 1:

structuring element B = 13x13 pixels of gray level 1

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 Opening and Closing
 Opening:
• Smoothes the contour of an object,
• Breaks narrow isthmuses, and
• Eliminates thin protrusions.
 Closing:
• Smooth sections of contours but,
• Fuses narrow breaks and long thin gulfs,
• Eliminates small holes, and
• Fills gaps in the contour.
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 Opening
 The opening of set A by structuring element B,
denoted A ∘ B, is defined as;

A  B  ( A  B)  B
 Thus, the opening A by B is the erosion of A by
B, followed by dilation of the result by B.

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Example 2:
Opening

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Example 3:

Opening

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 Opening

A  B  ( A  B)  B
A  B  {( B ) z | ( B) z  A}
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Example 4: Opening

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 Closing
 The closing of set A by structuring element B,
denoted A• B, is defined as:
A  B  ( A  B)  B
 Dilation of A by B, followed by erosion of the
result by B.

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Example 5:
Closing

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Example 6:
Closing

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Example 7: Closing

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 Properties

Opening
(i) AB is a subset (subimage) of A
(ii) If C is a subset of D, then C B is a subset of D B
(iii) (A B) B = A B
Closing
(i) A is a subset (subimage) of AB
(ii) If C is a subset of D, then C B is a subset of D B
(iii) (A B) B = A B

Note: repeated openings/closings has no effect!

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Useful: open & close

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 Application:
Filtering Operation

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 Some Basic Morphological Algorithms:
Boundary Extraction
The boundary of a set A, denoted by β(A),can be obtained by first
eroding A and B and then performing the set difference between A and
its erosion.
 ( A)  A  ( A  B)
and B is a structuring element.

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Example

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 Hole filling/Region Filling
c
X k  ( X k 1  B)  A k  1,2,3,...

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Example

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 Thinning

A  B  A  ( A  B)
c
 A  ( A  B)

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 K

Skeletons S ( A)   S k ( A)
k 0

S k ( A)  ( A  kB )  ( A  kB )  B

K  max{k | ( A  kB)  }

K
A   ( S k ( A)  kB )
k 0

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