Morphological operations are a set of non-linear image processing techniques that process images based on their shapes. They are primarily applied to binary images, where the presence or absence of pixels is critical for analyzing structures. The operations work by probing the image with a structuring element, which is a predefined shape (like a square, diamond, or circle).
The two fundamental operations in mathematical morphology are dilation and erosion. Dilation adds pixels to the boundaries of objects in an image, effectively enlarging them, while erosion removes pixels on object boundaries, making them smaller. These operations can be combined to achieve more complex effects such as opening (erosion followed by dilation) and closing (dilation followed by erosion), which help in removing noise and filling gaps in binary images.
More advanced morphological operations include morphological gradient, which highlights the edges of objects, and hit-or-miss transform, which is used for detecting specific shapes. Morphological operations are widely used in various applications such as object recognition, image segmentation, and feature extraction in computer vision.