The creation of this website is for addition to the Image and Video Signal Processing website as a small tutorial in image processing.  I have created it as part of my Honor's project for Dr. Marios Pattichis at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

The goal of this website is to introduce the basic concepts of binary morphology and to explore implementation of these concepts using MATLAB and graphical user interfaces.   

You may be wondering what is binary morphology and why is it worth learning about.  To begin, it is helpful to understand the name itself.  Here are the definitions of the words separately, followed by an explanation of their usage together.

Binary:  Characterized by or consisting of two parts or components; twofold.

Morphology: A study of structure or form.

Binary morphology is a subset of the greater concept of image processing.  The binary part refers to the fact that the images are composed of black and white.  Thinking of a one-bit per pixel LCD screen, each pixel is either on or off.  The morphology part refers to the structure of these binary images.  Often the structure of an image may become distorted in some way, such as by experiencing noise in the image.  This noise changes the structure of the image in an undesirable way.  Through the methods that are introduced in this website and the demonstrations that go along with them, it should become clear that binary morphology is a powerful tool in manipulating images in order to filter out these undesirable characteristics.

Something that I commonly think of when referring to binary morphology is the story by Franz Kafka, entitled, The Metamorphosis.  The book is about a young salesman who awakes to find that he has morphed into a cockroach in his sleep.  Therefore, I always view binary morphology as the morphing or changing of a binary image. 

In a more mathematical sense, binary morphology is based on the principles of set theory. All morphology functions rely on the use of set operations in order to change an image.  However, the most basic and essential morphology operations simply use the logical operations of OR and AND.  These operations are discussed in detail in the links below.

Follow these links in succession to get a feeling for the idea of binary morphology and to view these concepts using MATLAB demonstrations.

·    Binary Morphology Operations

·   Noise Demonstrations

·   MATLAB GUI Design

·   Links to Helpful Sites

This page was created by Scott A. Connors, Undergraduate Student in Computer Engineering at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

E-mail: sconnors@unm.edu