Image analysis – Image transformation or preprocessing
Patent
1993-12-29
1995-10-31
Boudreau, Leo H.
Image analysis
Image transformation or preprocessing
382302, G06K 962
Patent
active
054636981
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The object of the present invention is a method for the processing of images with the use of hierarchically organized queues. It relates more particularly to the segmentation of the images, namely to the recognition, in an image, of certain shapes whose contours, notably because of the image noise, appear to be imprecise, and to the filtering, namely the elimination of noise. It can be used in all sectors of the analysis of images, especially in the medical field, in the analysis of the images acquired by tomographs, whether these images are 2D images or 3D images or even incorporate time as a fourth dimension. The method can furthermore be extended to numerous dimensions as well as to color images. The method of the invention can also be applied in the field of traffic control, for the detection of vehicles and of roads, and more generally in all fields of industrial vision. Finally, it can constitute an essential part in coding and image compression operations for telecommunications and archiving.
The main two problems to be resolved in image processing are the simplification of images in order to extract their major features and to eliminate the noise from them, as well as the extraction of relevant contours of the objects that are to be subjected to measurements. Standard solutions to these problems exist, and are based on the techniques of mathematical morphology, described for example in the work by J. Serra, Image Analysis and Mathematical Morphology, vols. 1 (1982) and 2 (1988), Academic Press. The images are subjected to neighborhood transformations, such as erosion and expansion.
It may be recalled that processing with such operators amounts to qualifying a value of an image parameter at each picture element as a function of values of image parameters which are, in principle, the same, at picture elements neighboring this picture element. Thus, for a television type 2D image, an exploration is carried out, with a window of analysis, of all the picture elements of a line and all the lines one after the other, and a picture element located at the center of the window is assigned an image parameter, for example a luminosity, computed according to a mathematical function, for example the minimum value encountered in the window, of the other picture elements contained in the window. Normally, these transformations are undertaken iteratively. At each iteration, there is the creation of a new image increasingly approaching the final image desired. The algorithm is stopped when then new iteration no longer changes anything in the result of the transformation.
The main drawback of these transformations is their slowness, when they are carried out on a conventional computer. To overcome this drawback, a wired device has been described in the French patent filed on Jul. 11 1975 under number 75 21925. When there is no such wired device, the processing can be accelerated by resorting to sequential transformations of images. For example, a method and a device for the sequential transformation of images are known from the French patent No. 2 586 120 filed on Aug. 7, 1985 under No. 85 12120. The object of the sequential improvement is the incorporation, in the window of exploration, of picture elements belonging to the image to be processed and picture elements that have just been processed just before the picture element on which the window is now centered. This sequential technique enables a reduction in the number of iterations but, for reasons of coherence, needs to be carried out at least a second time, with the image being explored in the reverse direction to the first direction of exploration.
In view of the number of picture elements to be processed, in particular when the resolution is of the order of 1024 picture elements by 1024 picture elements, or else for 3D images or again for successions of images to be coded and transmitted swiftly in telecommunications, a processing algorithm such as this is still far too long. It will be shown that, with the invention, it is possible to obtain a gain in proces
REFERENCES:
patent: 4809348 (1989-02-01), Meyer et al.
patent: 5274717 (1993-12-01), Miura et al.
Association pour la Recherche et le Development des Methodes et
Boudreau Leo H.
Kondracki Edward J.
Tran Phuoc
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