HIERARCHICAL IMAGE REPRESENTATION BY MATHEMATICAL MORPHOLOGY SUBBAND DECOMPOSITION

An efficient subband image decomposition method by mathematical morpho logy has been proposed recently. This method decomposes the input sign al spectrum into 4 subbands by using two separable structuring element s. Based on this method, a hierarchical image representation referred to as subband pyramid is described. This subband pyramid scheme preser ves the number of pixels as in the original image, also the data struc ture itself is very compact. More importantly, morphological filtering manipulates the specific shape in the image, it only alters certain g eometric details without affecting the remaining image structure. When the resolution is reduced, no overall blurring is introduced in the i mage as the conventional linear filtering method does. This natural de composition of multiple scale shapes might be a useful hierarchical re presentation for the images.