Morphological Classification of Binary Image’s Pixels

The paper presents a novel approach to the classification of binary image pixels which is based on mathematical morphology. The proposed method makes use of new operators of class extractors to extract from the original image pixels belonging to pre-defined classes. Classes consist of pixels characterized by particular morphological properties. In the paper, a general scheme of morphological classifier is introduced. Depending on class to detect, various extractors can be defined based on mathematical morphology. Extracted classes can be organized in a structure of a class hierarchy tree. Apart from the general framework of morphological classifier also various class–extractors are described. Also, the class distribution functions, which can be used as shape descriptors for pattern recognition, are introduced in the paper. Finally, two practical examples of classification of binary image pixels are presented in the paper: application to shape description and to analysis of the shape of water bodies.