Abstract
The binary hit-or-miss transform is applied to filter digital gray-scale signals. This is accomplished by applying a union of hit-or-miss transforms to an observed signal's umbra and then taking the surface of the filtered umbra as the estimate of the ideal signal. The hit-or-miss union is constructed to provide the optimal mean-absolute-error filter for both the ideal signal and its umbra. The method is developed in detail for thinning hit-or-miss filters and applies at once to the dual thickening filters. It requires the output of the umbra filter to be an umbra, which in general is not true. A key aspect of the paper is the complete characterization of umbra-preserving union-of-hit-or-miss thinning and thickening filters. Taken together, the mean-absolute-error theory and the umbra-preservation characterization provide a full characterization of binary hit-or-miss filtering as applied to digital gray-scale signals. The theory is at once applicable to hit-or-miss filtering of digital gray-scale images through the three-dimensional (3-D) binary hit-or-miss transform.
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Dougherty, E.R. Optimal mean-absolute-error filtering of gray-scale signals by the morphological hit-or-miss transform. J Math Imaging Vis 4, 255–271 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01254102
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01254102