Hardware manual

Morphology Close Impact Reference Guide

Datalogic Automation Inc. 3-52

Morphology

Morphology is the act of warping an image according to mathematically defined relationships. It can elimi-

nate noise, smooth edges, join narrow gaps, and fill small holes on each image. Morphological operations

are non-linear and irreversible. There is no inverse operation to undo what was done by the last operation.

Thus, each operation loses some information about the original image.

Morphology tools use 3x3 binary analysis. During binary morphology, the tool checks the greyscale values

in the image and assigns each pixel an ON or OFF value. The tool then performs the operation (based on the

Number of Iterations value), adjusting each pixel's value after comparing its value and the values of sur-

rounding pixels in a 3x3 pixel neighborhood.

During pixel analysis, the tool first groups pixels. A group consists of any foreground or background pixels

that are connected, or touching. The tools use the eight-connected rule to group pixels into foreground blobs.

The eight-connected rule states that two foreground pixels are connected if they are directly side by side, top

to bottom, or if their corners touch. In this example, the white pixels A, B, C, F, H, and X are connected.

The close operation is similar to dilation in that it tends to enlarge foreground (bright) regions in an image

(and shrink background holes), but it affects the original boundary shape less. It is defined as a dilation fol-

lowed by an erosion.

Shape List The desired region of the image to search. If no shape is defined, the

entire image is processed.

Number of Itera-

tions

The number of times to perform the operation. If zero is entered, the tool

just copies the input image to the output.

Morphology Shape Defines the shape of the neighborhood around each pixel that is

searched to find the output pixel value. See “Morphology Shape” on

page 3-53.

Output Name What it is

Output Image The morphed Image (viewed on the Output Image tab).

Input Name What it is

Results of a close

operation