SADDLE-POINT BASED SEPARATION OF TOUCHED OBJECTS IN 2-D IMAGE

摘要

In many image analysis and processing problems, discriminating the size and shape of each individual object in an aggregate pile projected in an image is an important practice. It is relatively easy to distinguish these features among the objects already separated from each other. The problems will be undoubtedly more complex and of greater challenge if the objects are touched or/and overlapped. This letter presents an algorithm that can be used to separate the touches and overlaps existing in the objects within a 2-D image. The approach is first to convert the gray-scale image to its corresponding binary one and then to the 3-D topographic one using the erosion operations. A template (or mask) is engineered to search the topographic surface for the saddle point, from which the segmenting orientation is determined followed by the desired separating operation. The algorithm is tested on a real image and the running result is adequately satisfying and encouraging.