NEIGHBORHOOD OPERATION BINARY IMAGE ALGEBRA FOR OPTICAL MORPHOLOGICALIMAGE-PROCESSING

A neighborhood operation binary image algebra (NOBIA) which has only o ne basic operation is presented and developed. The basic operation of NOBIA is a convolution followed by a nonlinear filtering function and then an intersection operation. The parallel architecture of an optica l neighborhood operation digital image processor is designed to effici ently perform the parallel morphological image processing algorithm pr ovided by NOBIA, and the optical implementation hardware of the proces sor is discussed. Using an incoherent optical convoluter as a three-di mensional free space interconnection device, a smart LCLV as an optica l nonlinear device, and a simple optical circuit for intersection oper ation, an optical hardware is constituted and used to realize the basi c operation of NOBIA experimentally. Any image transformation can be p erformed with this hardware by executing the basic operation repeatedl y according to proper iterative programming.