Soft morphological filters farm a large class of nonlinear filters wit
h many desirable properties. However, few design methods exist for the
se filters. This paper demonstrates how optimization schemes. simulate
d annealing and genetic algorithms, can be employed in the search for
soft morphological filters having optimal performance in a given signa
l processing task. Furthermore, the properties of the achieved optimal
soft morphological filters in different situations are analyzed. (C)
1996 SPIE and IS&T.