Abstract

Morphological filtering (MF), a form of nonlinear image processing, has recently been applied to optical image processing. Among the MF processing capabilities are the noise removal, median filtering, edge detection, and skeletonization. For an electronic MF implementation, a time-consuming 2-D image correlation is performed. Although an electronic special-purpose cellular processor can be used for MF processing, its processing and interconnect complexity is large. On the other hand, using free-space optics, both coherent and incoherent optical MF have been suggested. The existing optical MF approaches have drawbacks, such as their lack of programmability, employing a less-compact architecture, etc. In this talk, a new liquid crystal TV (LCTV) based compact, real time programmable optical MF is proposed and described. Using a LCTV addressed lenslet array that serves as a structuring element and a projection lens followed by an electronic threshold processor, this new compact optical device experimentally demonstrates its capability of performing real time image dilation, erosion, and noise clean-up operations.

© 1989 Optical Society of America