Morse Operators for Digital Planar Surfaces and Their Application to Image Segmentation

Luis Gustavo Nonato, Antnio Castelo Filho, Rosane Minghim, and Joo Batista

AbstractThis paper introduces the concept of digital planar
surfaces and corresponding Morse operators. These operators
offer a novel and powerful method for construction and de-construction
of such surfaces in a way that global topological control
of the resulting object is always maintained. In that respect, this
paper offers a complete pixel characterization tool. Image handling
is a natural application for such approach.We present a novel fast
algorithm for image segmentation using Morse operators for digital
planar surfaces. It classifies as a region growing technique with
added topological control and is extremely useful for applications
that need proper object description. Results from real data are
stimulating, and show that the segmentation algorithm compares
very well with other methods. The topological approach also
forms a base for future expansion to applications such as volume
segmentation.


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