Improved Watershed Algorithm Based on Morphology and Distance Transform

Abstract

In this paper we proposed an improved watershed algorithm for the quasi-circle overlapping images of the bars end face. According to the classical watershed algorithm, which often causes over-segmentation, the improved algorithm does a series of pretreatment with the original image, such as sobel filter. With the gradient operator and mathematical morphology method, we firstly obtain the smooth image of the forced local maximum marks. Then, on the basis of the quasi-circle characteristic of the target image, we proceed to maximize the erosion with circular structure in order to prevent under-segmentation. Finally, we use the watershed algorithm to segment the gray image based on distance transform. So we can separate the target from each other to achieve the accurate counting purpose. By using the proposed algorithm in the article, we obtain satisfactory segmentation results of the quasi-circle overlapping image of the bars end face image.