<title>Morphological segmentation of binary shapes into convex polygons</title>

Abstract

Mathematical morphology is an approach to image analysis based on geometric concept of shape and size. Naturally, it provides a very effective tool for shape analysis. In this paper, we present a new morphological shape segmentation algorithm which decomposes a 2-D binary shape into a class of convex polygonal components. In this algorithm, shape information is extracted by using a number of different small shape patterns as structuring elements to probe the given shape through basic morphological operations. Basic morphological operations are also used to transform the given image so that in the transformed image global shape information is still retained and can be extracted efficiently by using only 'neighborhood' operations. The resulting algorithm is very simple and yet very effective. Decomposition examples presented show good agreements between the decomposition results and the natural structures of the given shapes. The shape segments produced can be used to construct structural shape description and for other shape analysis purposes.© (1992) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.