A morphological pyramidal image decomposition

A multiresolution image representation is presented in which iterative morphological filters of many scales hut identical shape serve as basis functions. Structural pattern decomposition is achieved by subtracting successive layers in the multiresolution representation. The representation differs from established techniques in that the code elements have a well defined location and size. The resulting image description provides a useful basis for multiresolution shape analysis and is well suited for VLSI imple-