Connections for sets and functions

Classically, connectivity is a topological notion for sets, often introduced by means of arcs. An algebraic definition, called connection, has been proposed by Serra to extend the notion of connectivity to complete sup-generated lattices. A connection turns out to be characterized by a family of openings parameterized by the sup-generators, which partition each element of the lattice into maximal components. Starting from a first connection, several others may be constructed; e.g., by applying dilations. The present paper applies this theory to numerical functions. Every connection leads to segmenting the support of the function under study into regions. Inside each region, the function is r-continuous, for a modulus of continuity r given a priori, and characteristic of the connection. However, the segmentation is not unique, and may be particularized by other considerations (self-duality, large or low number of point components, etc.). These variants are introduced by means of examples for three different connections: flat zone connections, jump connections, and smooth path connections. They turn out to provide remarkable segmentations, depending only on a few parameters. In the last section, some morphological filters are described, based on flat zone connections, namely openings by reconstruction, flattenings and levelings.