Binary Image Analysis

Binary image analysis

• consists of a set of image analysis operations
that are used to produce or process binary
images, usually images of 0’s and 1’s.

0 represents the background

1 represents the foreground

00010010001000
00011110001000
00010010001000
1
Binary Image Analysis
• is used in a number of practical applications

• part inspection

• riveting

• fish counting

• document processing

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What kinds of operations?

 Separate objects from background

and from one another

 Aggregate pixels for each object

 Compute features for each object

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Example: red blood cell image
 Many blood cells
are separate
objects
 Many touch – bad!
 Salt and pepper
noise from
thresholding
 How useable is this
data?

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Results of analysis
 63 separate
objects
detected
 Single cells
have area
about 50
 Noise spots
 Gobs of cells

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Useful Operations

1. Thresholding a gray-tone image

2. Determining good thresholds

3. Connected components analysis

4. Binary mathematical morphology

5. All sorts of feature extractors

(area, centroid, circularity, …)

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Thresholding
 Background is black
 Healthy cherry is
bright
 Bruise is medium dark
 Histogram shows two
cherry regions (black
background has been
removed)
pixel
counts

0 256
gray-tone values 7
Histogram-Directed Thresholding

How can we use a histogram to separate an

image into 2 (or several) different regions?

Is there a single clear threshold? 2? 3?

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Automatic Thresholding: Otsu’s Method

Grp 1 Grp 2
Assumption: the histogram is bimodal

Method: find the threshold t that minimizes

the weighted sum of within-group variances
for the two groups that result from separating
the gray tones at value t.

See text (at end of Chapter 3) for the recurrence relations;

in practice, this operator works very well for true bimodal
distributions and not too badly for others.
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Thresholding Example

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Connected Components Labeling
Once you have a binary image, you can identify and
then analyze each connected set of pixels.

The connected components operation takes in a binary image

and produces a labeled image in which each pixel has the
integer label of either the background (0) or a component.

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Methods for CC Analysis
1. Recursive Tracking (almost never used)

2. Parallel Growing (needs parallel hardware)

3. Row-by-Row (most common)

• Classical Algorithm (see text)

• Efficient Run-Length Algorithm

(developed for speed in real
industrial applications)

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Equivalent Labels
Original Binary Image

0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0111100001
0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0111100011
0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0111100111
0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0111100111
0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1111100111
0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1111100111
0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1111111111
0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1111111111
0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0000011111

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Equivalent Labels
The Labeling Process

0001110000222200003 12
0001111000222200033 13
0001111100222200333
0001111110222200333
0001111111111100333
0001111111111100333
0001111111111111111
0001111111111111111
0001111110000011111

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 Run-Length Data Structure
01234
0 11 11
row scol ecol label
1 11 1
2 1 1 1 1 Binary 0 UNUSED 0
3 Image 1
0 0 1 0
4 1111 2
0 3 4 0
3
1 0 1 0
Rstart Rend 4
1 4 4 0
01 2 5
2 0 2 0
13 4 6
2 4 4 0
25 6 Row Index 7
4 1 4 0
30 0
Runs
47 7 15
Run-Length Algorithm
Procedure run_length_classical
{
initialize Run-Length and Union-Find data structures
count <- 0

/* Pass 1 (by rows) */

for each current row and its previous row

{
move pointer P along the runs of current row
move pointer Q along the runs of previous row

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Case 1: No Overlap
Q Q

|/////| |///| |///|

|/////| |////| |/////|
P P

/* new label */
count <- count + 1 /* check Q’s next run */
label(P) <- count Q <- Q + 1
P <- P + 1

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 Case 2: Overlap
Subcase 1: Subcase 2:
P’s run has no label yet P’s run has a label that is
different from Q’s run
Q Q
|///////| |/////| |///////| |/////|
|/////////////| |/////////////|
P P
label(P) <- label(Q) union(label(P),label(Q))
move pointer(s) move pointer(s)
}

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Pass 2 (by runs)
/* Relabel each run with the name of the
equivalence class of its label */
For each run M
{
label(M) <- find(label(M))
}

}
where union and find refer to the operations of the
Union-Find data structure, which keeps track of sets
of equivalent labels.

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Labeling shown as Pseudo-Color

connected
components
of 1’s from
thresholded
image

connected
components
of cluster
labels

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Mathematical Morphology
Binary mathematical morphology consists of two
basic operations

dilation and erosion

and several composite relations

closing and opening

conditional dilation
...

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Dilation
Dilation expands the connected sets of 1s of a binary image.

It can be used for

1. growing features

2. filling holes and gaps

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Erosion
Erosion shrinks the connected sets of 1s of a binary image.

It can be used for

1. shrinking features

2. Removing bridges, branches and small protrusions

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Structuring Elements

A structuring element is a shape mask used in

the basic morphological operations.

They can be any shape and size that is

digitally representable, and each has an origin.

box
hexagon disk
something

box(length,width) disk(diameter)
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Dilation with Structuring Elements
The arguments to dilation and erosion are
1. a binary image B
2. a structuring element S

dilate(B,S) takes binary image B, places the origin

of structuring element S over each 1-pixel, and ORs
the structuring element S into the output image at
the corresponding position.

0000 dilate 0110

1
0110 0111
11
0000 0000
S
B origin BS
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Erosion with Structuring Elements

erode(B,S) takes a binary image B, places the origin

of structuring element S over every pixel position, and
ORs a binary 1 into that position of the output image only if
every position of S (with a 1) covers a 1 in B.

origin
0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 erode
0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0
1
0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0
1
1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0

B S B S
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 Example 1 to Try
0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0
0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0
1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 S
B 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
111 erode
0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0
111
0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0
111
0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0

dilate with same

structuring element

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Example 2 to Try
B
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
S
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1
0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1
0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1
0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0
0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0
0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

First erode and then dilate with the same S.

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Opening and Closing

• Closing is the compound operation of dilation followed

by erosion (with the same structuring element)

• Opening is the compound operation of erosion followed

by dilation (with the same structuring element)

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Gear Tooth Inspection

original
binary
image
How did
they do it?

detected
defects

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Region Properties
Properties of the regions can be used to recognize objects.

• geometric properties (Ch 3)

• gray-tone properties

• color properties

• texture properties

• shape properties (a few in Ch 3)

• motion properties

• relationship properties (1 in Ch 3)
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Geometric and Shape Properties

• area
• centroid
• perimeter
• perimeter length
• circularity
• elongation
• mean and standard deviation of radial distance
• bounding box
• extremal axis length from bounding box
• second order moments (row, column, mixed)
• lengths and orientations of axes of best-fit ellipse

Which are statistical? Which are structural?

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Region Adjacency Graph

A region adjacency graph (RAG) is a graph in which

each node represents a region of the image and an edge
connects two nodes if the regions are adjacent.

This is jumping ahead a little bit.

We’ll consider this further for structural image analysis.

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