Mathematical Morphology: A Modern Approach in Image Processing Based on Algebra and Geometry

Mathematical morphology is a theory of image transformations and image functionals which is based on set-theoretical, geometrical, and topological concepts. The methodology is particularly useful for the analysis of the geometrical structure in an image. The main goal of this paper is to give an impression of the underlying philosophy and the mathematical theories which are relevant to this field. The following topics are discussed: introduction to mathematical morphology; generalization to complete lattices; morphological filters and their construction by iteration; geometrical aspects of morphology (e.g., convexity, distance, geodesic operators, granulometries, metric dilations, distance transform, cost functions); and extension of binary operators to grey-scale images.