Optical threshold-decomposed Boolean-based gray-scale filter

Abstract

Because of the advances made in optical technology, an extension can be made from the well-known stack filter to a new kind of gray-scale filter by using arbitrary Boolean functions instead of positive Boolean functions in the second step of a three-step process. Applications of these threshold-decomposed Boolean-based gray-scale filters in image processing include image smoothing and feature detection. A general optical implementation approach of nonlinear threshold-decomposed Boolean-based gray-scale filters is also described that utilizes area coding, gray scale correlation and lookup table thresholding techniques. Some experimental results are demonstrated.