ANALYSIS OF BONE X-RAYS USING MORPHOLOGICAL FRACTALS

We have applied mathematical morphology for fractal analysis of bone x -ray images. The digitized gray level image is treated as a three-dime nsional surface whose fractal dimension is calculated by performing a series of dilations on this surface and plotting the area of the resul ting set of surfaces against the size of the structuring element. This approach gives us the added advantage of encoding structural informat ion via the use of a structuring element. The algorithm has been appli ed to several bone radiographs and the results demonstrate that the fr actal dimension using mathematical morphology gives us a robust textur e measure of trabecular bone structures.