8.5 Morphological operations

Morphology in the context of analysis and processing of the images describes the characteristics of form and structure of its areas. That means, morphological operations are connected with the image analysis on the basis of form.
 
8.5.1 Dilate
8.5.2 Erode
8.5.3 Opening
8.5.4 Closing
8.5.5 Gradient
8.5.6 Top Hat transformation
8.5.7 Black Hat transformation
 
These transformations are carried out with the help of the structure-forming element (primitive), overlapping of which to the image solves specific tasks; these transformations are based on operations at sets. Sets in morphology are objects in the image: for example, many points in two-dimensional space. Thus, all black pixels of black and white image are one of the means of its morphological description.
 
The listed filters are used for extracting the parts of the image, which are necessary for its presentation and description (borders, skeletons, dome-shaped shells, etc).
 
With the help of morphology it is possible to find the edges of objects in the image, analyze them and observe the present textures. So, use of these transformations is possible for compression of images, analysis of components and getting rid of the noise. Mostly they are used for increasing the quality, segmentation (for example, for simplifying presentation) and restoring the images.
 
Morphological operation most often are applied to binary images which are received after threshold transformation, and to the halftone images.