A New Optimization Algorithm for Dilation and Erosion

Effectively optimizing dilation and erosion is an extensively studied but not completely resolved problem. In this paper, a new optimization algorithm is proposed to improve the efficiency of dilation and erosion. Four notions are given to define the edges for any simply connected structuring element (SE). An assistant algorithm is proposed to detect these edges. Based on these notions, three iteration equations can be derived, which redefine dilation and erosion as iteration calculation. Time complexity of the new algorithm is reduced to O(n³). In addition, the new algorithm is suitable for online applications without the decomposition of SE. Simulation shows that with the same parameters, the performance of the new algorithm is better than that of Yang's algorithm.