Logarithmic mathematical morphology: a new framework adaptive to illumination changes

A new set of mathematical morphology (MM) operators adaptive to illumination changes caused by variation of exposure time or light intensity is defined thanks to the Logarithmic Image Processing (LIP) model. This model based on the physics of acquisition is consistent with human vision. The fundamental operators, the logarithmic-dilation and the logarithmic-erosion, are defined with the LIP-addition of a structuring function. The combination of these two adjunct operators gives morphological filters, namely the logarithmic-opening and closing, useful for pattern recognition. The mathematical relation existing between ``classical'' dilation and erosion and their logarithmic-versions is established facilitating their implementation. Results on simulated and real images show that logarithmic-MM is more efficient on low-contrasted information than ``classical'' MM

Strong edge features for image coding

A two-component model is proposed for perceptual image coding. For the first component of the model, the watershed operator is used to detect strong edge features. Then, an efficient morphological interpolation algorithm reconstructs the smooth areas of the image from the extracted edge information, also known as sketch data. The residual component, containing fine textures, is separately coded by a subband coding scheme. The morphological operators involved in the coding of the primary component perform very efficiently compared to conventional techniques like the LGO operator, used for the edge extraction, or the diffusion filters, iteratively applied for the interpolation of smooth areas in previously reported sketch-based coding schemes.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Riemannian mathematical morphology

This paper introduces mathematical morphology operators for real-valued images whose support space is a Riemannian manifold. The starting point consists in replacing the Euclidean distance in the canonic quadratic structuring function by the Riemannian distance used for the adjoint dilation/erosion. We then extend the canonic case to a most general framework of Riemannian operators based on the notion of admissible Riemannian structuring function. An alternative paradigm of morphological Riemannian operators involves an external structuring function which is parallel transported to each point on the manifold. Besides the definition of the various Riemannian dilation/erosion and Riemannian opening/closing, their main properties are studied. We show also how recent results on Lasry-Lions regularization can be used for non-smooth image filtering based on morphological Riemannian operators. Theoretical connections with previous works on adaptive morphology and manifold shape morphology are also considered. From a practical viewpoint, various useful image embedding into Riemannian manifolds are formalized, with some illustrative examples of morphological processing real-valued 3D surfaces

NeatVision: a development environment for machine vision engineers

This Chapter will detail a free image analysis development environment for machine vision engineers. The environment provides high-level access to a wide range of image manipulation, processing and analysis algorithms (over 300 to date) through a well-defined and easy to use graphical interface. Users can extend the core library using the developer’s interface, a plug-in, which features, automatic source code generation, compilation with full error feedback and dynamic algorithm updates. The Chapter will also discuss key issues associated with the environment and outline the advantages in adopting such a system for machine vision application developmen

Detection of dirt impairments from archived film sequences : survey and evaluations

Film dirt is the most commonly encountered artifact in archive restoration applications. Since dirt usually appears as a temporally impulsive event, motion-compensated interframe processing is widely applied for its detection. However, motion-compensated prediction requires a high degree of complexity and can be unreliable when motion estimation fails. Consequently, many techniques using spatial or spatiotemporal filtering without motion were also been proposed as alternatives. A comprehensive survey and evaluation of existing methods is presented, in which both qualitative and quantitative performances are compared in terms of accuracy, robustness, and complexity. After analyzing these algorithms and identifying their limitations, we conclude with guidance in choosing from these algorithms and promising directions for future research

Fuzzy techniques for noise removal in image sequences and interval-valued fuzzy mathematical morphology

Image sequences play an important role in today's world. They provide us a lot of information. Videos are for example used for traffic observations, surveillance systems, autonomous navigation and so on. Due to bad acquisition, transmission or recording, the sequences are however usually corrupted by noise, which hampers the functioning of many image processing techniques. A preprocessing module to filter the images often becomes necessary. After an introduction to fuzzy set theory and image processing, in the first main part of the thesis, several fuzzy logic based video filters are proposed: one filter for grayscale video sequences corrupted by additive Gaussian noise and two color extensions of it and two grayscale filters and one color filter for sequences affected by the random valued impulse noise type. In the second main part of the thesis, interval-valued fuzzy mathematical morphology is studied. Mathematical morphology is a theory intended for the analysis of spatial structures that has found application in e.g. edge detection, object recognition, pattern recognition, image segmentation, image magnification… In the thesis, an overview is given of the evolution from binary mathematical morphology over the different grayscale morphology theories to interval-valued fuzzy mathematical morphology and the interval-valued image model. Additionally, the basic properties of the interval-valued fuzzy morphological operators are investigated. Next, also the decomposition of the interval-valued fuzzy morphological operators is investigated. We investigate the relationship between the cut of the result of such operator applied on an interval-valued image and structuring element and the result of the corresponding binary operator applied on the cut of the image and structuring element. These results are first of all interesting because they provide a link between interval-valued fuzzy mathematical morphology and binary mathematical morphology, but such conversion into binary operators also reduces the computation. Finally, also the reverse problem is tackled, i.e., the construction of interval-valued morphological operators from the binary ones. Using the results from a more general study in which the construction of an interval-valued fuzzy set from a nested family of crisp sets is constructed, increasing binary operators (e.g. the binary dilation) are extended to interval-valued fuzzy operators

( max , min )-convolution and Mathematical Morphology

International audienceA formal denition of morphological operators in (max, min)-algebra is introduced and their relevant properties from an algebraic viewpoint are stated. Some previous works in mathematical morphology have already encountered this type of operators but a systematic study of them has not yet been undertaken in the morphological literature. It is shown in particular that one of their fundamental property is the equivalence with level set processing using Minkowski addition and subtraction. Theory of viscosity solutions of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation with Hamiltonians containing u and Du is summarized, in particular, the corresponding Hopf-Lax-Oleinik formulas as (max, min)-operators. Links between (max, min)-convolutions and some previous approaches of unconventional morphology, in particular fuzzy morphology and viscous morphology, are reviewed

Multimodal decision-level fusion for person authentication

In this paper, the use of clustering algorithms for decision-level data fusion is proposed. Person authentication results coming from several modalities (e.g., still image, speech), are combined by using fuzzy k-means (FKM), fuzzy vector quantization (FVQ) algorithms, and median radial basis function (MRBF) network. The quality measure of the modalities data is used for fuzzification. Two modifications of the FKM and FVQ algorithms, based on a novel fuzzy vector distance definition, are proposed to handle the fuzzy data and utilize the quality measure. Simulations show that fuzzy clustering algorithms have better performance compared to the classical clustering algorithms and other known fusion algorithms. MRBF has better performance especially when two modalities are combined. Moreover, the use of the quality via the proposed modified algorithms increases the performance of the fusion system