Image Processing Toolbox

Dilation and Erosion

Dilation and erosion are two fundamental morphological operations. Dilation adds pixels to the boundaries of objects in an image, while erosion removes pixels on object boundaries. The number of pixels added or removed from the objects in an image depends on the size and shape of the structuring element used to process the image.

The following sections describe the dilation and erosion functions in the toolbox:

• Understanding Dilation and Erosion -- This section provides important background information about how the dilation and erosion functions operate.
• Structuring Elements -- This section describes structuring elements and how to create them.
• Dilating an Image -- This section describes how to use the imdilate function.
• Eroding an Image -- This section describes how to use the imerode function.
• Combining Dilation and Erosion -- This section describes some of the common operations that are based on dilation and erosion.
• Dilation- and Erosion-Based Functions -- This section describes toolbox functions that are based on dilation and erosion

Terminology

Understanding Dilation and Erosion