A study of the generalized morphological filter

A new class of morphological filters is proposed for image enhancement. The filter, known as the generalized morphological filter (GMF), uses multiple structuring elements and combines linear and morphological operations. The GMF can be designed to suppress various types of noise yet preserve geometrical structure in an image. A study of several aspects of the performance of the filter is presented. The study includes geometrical feature preservation, noise suppression, structuring element selection, and the root signal structure. For the sake of comparison, averaging and median filters are also used in the experiments and corresponding figures of merit of the performance of the filter. The empirical study shows that the generalized morphological filter possesses effective noise suppression with reduced geometrical feature blurring.This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, under Grant No. CDR-8803017 to the Engineering Research Center for Intelligent Manufacturing Systems.