GENERAL ADAPTIVE NEIGHBORHOOD MATHEMATICAL MORPHOLOGY
Jean-Charles Pinoli, Johan Debayle
Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Etienne / LPMG, UMR CNRS 5148
158 cours Fauriel, 42023 Saint-Etienne cedex 2, France
Email: pinoli@emse.fr, debayle@emse.fr
ABSTRACT
This paper aims to present a novel framework, entitled Gen-
eral Adaptive Neighborhood Image Processing (GANIP),
focusing on the area of adaptive morphology. The usual
fixed-shape structuring elements required in Mathematical
Morphology (MM) are substituted by adaptive (GAN-based)
spatial structuring elements. GANIP and MM results to
the so-called General Adaptive Neighborhood Mathemati-
cal Morphology (GANMM). Several GANMM-based image
filters are defined. They satisfy strong morphological and
topological properties such as connectedness. The practical
results in the fields of image restoration and image enhance-
ment confirm and highlight the theoretical advantages of the
GANMM approach.
Index Terms— Adaptive filters , Image representations,
Image restoration, Image enhancement, Morphological oper-
ations
1. INTRODUCTION
A novel framework entitled General Adaptive Neighborhood
Image Processing (GANIP) [1] has been recently introduced
in order to propose an original image representation and
mathematical structure for adaptive processing and analysis
of gray-tone images. In this paper, the GANIP framework
is first presented and particularly studied in the context of
Mathematical Morphology (MM). The central idea is based
on the key notion of adaptivity which is simultaneously as-
sociated with the analyzing scales, the spatial structures and
the intensity values of the image to be addressed. GANIP
enables to define new adaptive operators. Such operators
are no longer spatially invariant, but vary over the whole
image with General Adaptive Neighborhoods (GANs) as
adaptive operational windows, taking intrinsically into ac-
count the local image features. The paper deals both with
GANIP and MM resulting to the so-called General Adaptive
Neighborhood Mathematical Morphology (GANMM) which
provides a novel framework in the area of adaptive morphol-
ogy [2, 3, 4]. The structuring elements, required for MM,
are substituted by GAN-based structuring elements, fitting to
the local contextual details of the studied image. GANMM
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leads to a relevant spatially-adaptive morphological image
processing and analysis, without a priori knowledge needed
about the image structures. Several GANMM-based image
processing and analysis issues are then addressed in the field
of image restoration and image enhancement. They are illus-
trated in several biomedical areas. In order to evaluate the
GANMM approach, a comparative study is proposed between
the adaptive and usual morphological operators (e.g. filters by
reconstruction). The practical results confirm and highlight
the theoretical advantages of the GANMM approach.
2. GANIP FRAMEWORK
In the so-called General Adaptive Neighborhood Image Pro-
cessing (GANIP) framework [1], a set of General Adaptive
Neighborhoods (GANs set) is identified about each point in
the image to be analyzed. These GANs are subsets of the im-
age spatial support and are used as adaptive spatial windows
for image transformations (such as adaptive morpholgical op-
erations) or quantitative image analysis.
2.1. Image space
In order to define powerful image processing operators, it is
necessary to represent intensity images within mathematical
frameworks (most of the time of a vectorial nature) based on a
physically and/or psychophysically relevant image formation
process. In addition, their mathematical structures and oper-
ations (the vector addition and then the scalar multiplication)
have to be consistent with the physical nature of the images
and/or the human visual system, and computationally effec-
tive. Thus, General Linear Image Processing (GLIP) frame-
works [5] have been explored, in order to include situations
in which signals or images are combined by processes other
than the usual vector addition. Consequently, operators based
on such intensity-based image processing frameworks should
be consistent with the physical and/or physiological settings
of the images to be processed.
The space of image (resp. criterion) mappings, defined
on the spatial support D and valued in a real numbers interval
Ẽ (resp. E), is represented in a GLIP framework, denoted I
(resp. C ). The GLIP framework I (resp. C ) is then supplied
2249 ICIP 2009
with an ordered vectorial structure, using the formal vector
addition  +̃ (resp. 
+ ), the formal scalar multiplication  ˜×
(resp. × ) and the classical total order relation ≥ defined di-
rectly from those of real numbers. Consequently, I and C are
complete lattices on which morphological operators could be
well-defined.
3. ADAPTIVE MORPHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS
The basic idea in the General Adaptive Neighborhood Mathe-
matical Morphology (GANMM) is to replace the usual Struc-
turing Element (SE) by GANs, providing adaptive operators
and filters.

2.2. Weak GANs 3.1. Adaptive Structuring Elements

For each point x ∈ D and for an image f ∈ I , its associ- The elementary operators of dilation and erosion use reflected
ated GAN denoted Vmh (x) is included as subset in D. The SEs in order to satisfy the morphological adjunction. In order

GANs are built upon a criterion mapping h ∈ C (based on to get this adjunction without considering reflected SEs, the
a local measurement such as luminance, contrast, thickness, symmetric strong GANs {Nm h
(x)}x∈D are used as Adap-

. . . related to f ), in relation with an homogeneity tolerance tive Structuring Elements (ASEs).
m belonging to the positive intensity value range E  +
. The
weak GANs are mathematically defined as following:
∀(m , h, x) ∈ E  +
×C×D 3.2. Adaptive Elementary Filters

Vmh (x) = Ch−1 ([h(x)  The elementary adjunct operators of adaptive dilation and
 − m
 ,h(x) 
+ m
 ]) (x) (1) adaptive erosion are defined accordingly to the ASEs:
where CX (x) denotes the path-connected component (with ∀(m , h, f, x) ∈ E +
×C×I ×D
the usual Euclidean topology on D ⊆ R2 ) of the subset X ⊆
D containing x ∈ D and h−1 (Y ) = {x ∈ D; h(x) ∈ Y }. h
Dm (f )(x) = sup f (w) (3)
h
w∈Nm (x)

h
Em (f )(x) = inf
h
f (w) (4)
w∈Nm (x)

Therefore, the most elementary adaptive morphological fil-
ters can be defined: the GAN closing and the GAN opening.
∀(m , h, f ) ∈ E +
×C×I
h h h
Cm (f ) = Em ◦ Dm (f ) (5)
h h h
(b) Two points x and y (c) GANs of x and y Om (f ) = Dm ◦ Em (f ) (6)

In the case where luminance is selected for the analyzing cri-

Fig. 1. Example of two weak GANs (b) on a human retinal terion (h ≡ f ), these adaptive morphological filters are con-
image (a). The GANs are determined by the image itself. nected operators (for all (x, y) neighboring points - with the
usual Euclidean topology on D ⊆ R2 - if h(x) = h(y) then
The GANs are self-determined and fit with the local spatial Nm h
(x) = Nm h
(y) and therefore Dhm (x) = Dhm (y)) ,
structures of the image.    
which is an overwhelming advantage compared to the usual
ones that fail to this strong property. Therefore, the building
2.3. Strong GANs by composition or combination with the supremum and the
infimum of these filters define connected operators, such as
A new collection of GANs, denoted Nhm (x), is introduced:
 adaptive alternating (sequential) filters.
∀(m , h, x) ∈ E +
×C×D

h
Nm (x) = {Vmh (z)|x ∈ Vmh (z)} (2) 3.3. Adaptive Alternating Filters
  
z∈D
h
Several adaptive morphological filters can be defined by
The strong GANs Nm (x) have similar properties as weak combination of these two elementary adaptive morphologi-

GANs. In addition, they satisfy the symmetry property: cal operators, in particular the adaptive closing-opening and
opening-closing filters: ∀(m , h, f ) ∈ E 
h h
x ∈ Nm (y) ⇔ y ∈ Nm (x). +
×C×I
 
The symmetry condition is relevant for topological and visual
reasons and allows to simplify the mathematical expressions COhm (f ) = Chm ◦ Ohm (f ) (7)
  
of adaptive morphological operators without increasing the
OChm (f ) = Ohm ◦ Chm (f ) (8)
computational complexity of algorithms.   

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3.4. Adaptive Sequential Filters 4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The families of adaptive morphological filters {Ohm }m≥0 and 4.1. Image Restoration
{Chm }m≥0 are generally not a size distribution and antisize
distribution [6] respectively, since the notion of semi-group is Usually, image restoration (denoising, deblurring) is often re-
generally not satisfied. Nevertheless, such families are built quired before image segmentation. In this context, Figure 2
by naturally reiterate adaptive dilation or erosion. Explicitly, shows the comparison between a usual and adaptive morpho-
adaptive sequential dilation, and erosion are respectively de- logical filter applied on a MRI brain image. More precisely,
fined as : ∀(m , h, f ) ∈ E +
×C×I an opening by reconstruction using a disk of radius 3 as global
SE and a GAN opening using the strong GANs as adaptive
h h h SEs (using the luminance criterion in the classical framework
Dm,p (f ) = Dm ◦ · · · ◦ Dm (f ) (9)
   and with the homogeneity tolerance m = 30) are compared as
p times
h h
well as their residues (white top-hat). Significant differences
Em,p (f ) = Em ◦ · · · ◦ Ehm (f ) (10)
  
p times

The morphological adjunction of Dhm,p and Ehm,p provides,

among other things, the two following sequential closing and
opening filters:
h
Cm,p (f ) = Ehm,p ◦ Dhm,p (f ) (11)
h h h
Om,p (f ) = Dm,p ◦ Em,p (f ) (12)

Moreover, the families {Ohm,p }p≥0 and {Chm,p }p≥0 generate

(a) Original f
size and antisize distributions, respectively.

3.5. Adaptive Alternating Sequential Filters

The extension to GANMM of the well-known alternating se-
quential filters (ASFs) can then be defined [7]:
∀(m, n, h) ∈ E  +
× N\{0} × C ∀(pi ) ∈ N 1,n increasing
sequence

ASFOChm,n (f ) = OChm,pn ◦ · · · ◦ OChm,p1 (f ) (13)

ASFCOhm,n (f ) = COhm,pn ◦ · · · ◦ COhm,p1 (f ) (14) (b) Opening by reconstruction (c) GAN opening

3.6. Adaptive Toggle Contrast Filters

The usual toggle contrast filter [8] is an edge sharpness op-
erator. This (non-adaptive) filter is here defined in the GA-
NIP framework using a local ’contrast’ criterion, such as the
local contrast defined in [9]. The so-called adaptive toggle
c(f )
contrast filter is the transformation denoted κm , where c(f )
and m represent the criterion mapping and the homogeneity
tolerance within the GLIP framework (required for the GANs
definition), respectively. It is defined as following: (d) residue: (a)-(b) (e) residue: (a)-(c)
∀(f, x, m ) ∈ I × D × E  + c(f )
κm (f )(x) =
 Fig. 2. Comparison of usual (b) and adaptive filtering (c) with
c(f ) c(f ) c(f )
Dm (f )(x) if Dm (f )(x) 
−̃ f (x) < f (x) 
−̃ Em
 (f )(x) their residues (d,e) of a MRI brain image (a).
c(f )
Em (f )(x) otherwise
are visible near the eyes. Using the opening by reconstruction,
c(f ) c(f )
where Dm and Em denote the adaptive dilation and adap- the eyes (peak structures) are not distinctly smoothed because
tive erosion computed with the criterion mapping c(f ). the SE is not large enough to contain these structures. On

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the contrary, the GAN opening is more clearly suitable for
restoring these kind of structures. The proposed filter merges
the neighboring flat zones with similar gray tones (smoothing
without damaging transitions).
4.2. Image Enhancement
Image enhancement is the improvement of image quality,
wanted e.g. for visual inspection or for machine analysis.
In the following example, the image enhancement process is
realized through the toggle contrast transformation. Figure
6 exposes an illustration of image enhancement using this
operator. The usual contrast κr using disks Br of radius r
as isotropic SEs is compared to the adaptive toggle contrast
using ASEs computed in a GLIP framework with a local
contrast criterion [9]. The process is applied on a real image
acquired on the retina of a human eye.
(a) Original (b) Local contrast
(c) Usual toggle contrast (c) Adaptive toggle contrast
Fig. 3. Comparison of usual (c) and adaptive (d) toggle con-
trast filtering, using a contrast criterion mapping (b), onto a
retina image (a).
The adaptive toggle contrast performs a locally accurate
image enhancement, taking into account the notion of contrast
within spatial structures of the image. Consequently, only the
transitions are sharpened while preserving the homogeneous
(flat) regions. On the contrary, the usual toggle contrast en-
hances the image in a uniform way. Thus, the spatial zones
around transitions are rapidly damaged as soon as the filtering
becomes too strong.
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5. CONCLUSION
The GANIP framework has been presented in the context
of adaptive morphological filtering. Such operators are no
longer spatially invariant, but vary over the whole image
support with General Adaptive Neighborhoods (GANs) as
adaptive structuring elements, taking intrinsically into ac-
count the local image features. It results in the so-called
General Adaptive Neighborhood Mathematical Morphology
(GANMM). Using the image luminance as criterion map-
ping, the proposed filters are connected operators, which is
an overwhelming advantage comparing to the usual ones that
fail to this strong property. The practical results carried out in
the fields of image restoration and image enhancement have
confirmed and highlighted the theoretical advantages of the
proposed GANMM approach.
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