IMAGE PROCESSING, ANALYSIS,

RECOGNITION, AND UNDERSTANDING

An Integrated Edge Detection Method

Using Mathematical Morphology¶
C.-P. Huang and R.-Z. Wang
Department of Computer and Communication Engineering,
Ming Chuan University, 5 Der-Ming Rd. Kwei-shan, Tau-yuan 333, Taiwan
e-mail: hcptw@mcu.edu.tw; rzwang@mcu.edu.tw

Abstract—This paper presents an edge detection method based on mathematical morphology. The proposed
scheme consists of four steps: preprocessing, edge extraction, edge decision, and postprocessing. In the prepro-
cessing step, a morphological central transformation is applied to remove noise. In the edge extraction and deci-
sion steps, a morphological edge extractor is designed to estimate the edge information of an image, and an
edge decision criterion is followed to determine whether a pixel is an edge or not. In the postprocessing step,
the morphological hit-or-miss transformation is utilized to improve the correctness of the detected edges. It is
proved theoretically for the correctness and effectiveness for detecting ideal edges. Experimental results show
that the proposed method works well on both artificial and real images.
DOI: 10.1134/S1054661806030102

Keywords: edge detection, morphological transformation, mathematical morphology, morphological filters.

1. INTRODUCTION Mathematical morphology is an approach based on

Edge detection is one of the key technologies in the
field of signal, image, and video processing. Several
techniques based on linear filtering [6, 15] have been
proposed to detect edges. Spatial edge operators [16]
are conventional edge detection methods. Statistical
approaches such as the hypothesis test method [1] have
also been proposed. Multiscale edge detection proce-
dures, such as the Canny estimation approach [7] or
Mallat wavelet approach [13], have gained popularity
in recent years. The traditional edge detection approach
uses local operators as well as a threshold scheme. This
is done by using local operators to enhance the
strengths of edges and to smooth small variations at the
same time, and a threshold is applied to the processed
image to determine whether the edge pixel is present or
not. Sobel edge operator [11] is one of the most popular
edge detection operators. This operator is a weighted-
average operator that gives greater weight to points
lying close to the point of interest. These techniques
are shown to be effective in a clean image, but they
work poorly in the presence of noise [7]. There are
some limitations of using linear-based instead of non-
linear-based edge detection operators. A linear filter
may either blur edges or be sensitive to noise, while a
nonlinear filter retains the sharpness of the edges and is
insensitive to noise. Statistical and multiscale
approaches are based on convolution calculations and
consider multiple sizes of the windowed signal that can
be computationally expensive.
¶ The
text was submitted by the authors in English.
Received August 5, 2005
set theory for extracting geometrical features out of sig-
nals. The field was pioneered by Serra [4, 5], Sternberg
[12], and Maragos [9, 10]. Morphology has been shown
to be an effective method [2, 3, 10] to extract geometri-
cal features. Morphological edge detection has been
generally performed by using the difference of the two
processed images, for instance, between eroded and
dilated images or between the original and eroded
image [2, 14]. These results indicate that morphological
operators have potential in edge detection. The results
also show that their efforts emphasize the operator for
edge extraction.
The simplest morphological edge detectors are dila-
tion and erosion residues [5]. In Serra’s book [4], he
proposes the gradient method as an edge detector. A
gradient is defined by averaging the difference between
dilation and erosion of the signals and corresponds to
jumps in the image. This method is very simple and
effective when noise is absent. In Marago’s paper [8],
he proposes the erosion residue method. He defined the
structure element nB = B ⊕ B ⊕ …B, where B is a unit
size structure element, n is an element’s size, and ⊕ is
the morphological dilation operator. The residue f –
( fΘnB) will enhance the edge of a gray-scale image f,
where Θ is the morphological erosion operator. The
size n of nB will control the thickness of the edge mark-
ers. The results of this method will be position-biased
to the border of the brighter side. Haralick et al. [2] pro-
pose the blur-minimum morphological edge method.
This method has been shown to be effective in edge
extraction, but the edges are fuzzier.
In this paper, we propose an integrated mathemati-
cal morphology procedure to detect edges in images.

ISSN 1054-6618, Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis, 2006, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 406–412. © Pleiades Publishing, Inc., 2006.
 AN INTEGRATED EDGE DETECTION METHOD USING MATHEMATICAL MORPHOLOGY
Morphological operators are nonlinear; they are not
only very effective for detecting edges but also well
suited for efficient implementation using parallel or
sequential computing [5]. The proposed method is
shown to be theoretically effective for ideal edges.
Experimental results are provided to show the validity
and performance of our method in practice for artificial
and real images.
2. THE PROPOSED METHOD
The proposed edge detection method consists of the
following four steps: (1) preprocessing, (2) edge extrac-
tion, (3) edge decision, and (4) postprocessing. The
purpose of the preprocessing step is to remove noise
from an image in order to enhance the validity of the
subsequent edge detection process. A morphological
edge extractor is proposed to evaluate the edge infor-
mation of an image, and the morphological decision
step is applied to decide whether or not edges are
present. In the postprocessing step, a morphological
hit-or-miss transformation is designed to remove extra-
neous noisy edges. Details of each step are presented in
the following subsections.
2.1. Preprocessing
A good edge detection algorithm should not only be
capable of detecting the edge information but also be
insensitive to noise. A morphological transformation is
proposed here to remove noise while keeping the edge
information. In order to deal with both positive and
negative noise, we combine the positive and negative
morphological smoothing filters to form the morpho-
logical central transformation (CT). The central trans-
formation is derived from the combination of morpho-
logical opening-closing and morphological closing-
opening filters to obtain the central area of the signal,
that is,
CT ( f ( n ) )
= Min { oc ( f ( n ) ), Max { co ( f ( n ) ), f ( n ) } },
where co( f (n)) is the morphological opening operation
followed by the morphological closing operation
applied to signal f (n) and the oc( f (n)) is the morpholog-
ical closing operation followed by the morphological
opening operation applied to signal f (n). The central
transformation has the following important properties:.
Property 1. The CT( f (n)) is bounded to co( f (n))
and oc( f (n)), that is,
co ( f ( n ) ) ≤ CT ( f ( n ) ) ≤ oc ( f ( n ) ).
Property 2. The CT filter is an idempotent filter, that
is,
CT ( CT ( f ( n ) ) ) = CT ( f ( n ) ).
These properties can be proved using the antiextensive,
extensive, and idempotent properties of co and oc filters
PATTERN RECOGNITION AND IMAGE ANALYSIS
407
[3]. These properties show the validity of the CT for the
signal smoothing.
To compare with the linear smoothing (LS) operator
shown in Eq. (4) used in many edge detection algo-
rithms [2, 16],
( N – 1 )/2
∑
1
LS ( f ( n ) ) = ---- f ( n – j ), (4)
N
j = – ( N – 1 )/2
where N (odd, positive integer) is the number of pixels
of the mask and the median smoothing (MD) operator
is constructed by replacing the value of each point with
the median value in the masked neighborhood of that
point. The CT method is a better choice for noise
removal in edge detection applications due to the fol-
lowing observations: (1) Using LS, sharp edges are
widened. However, using the CT and MD, sharp edges
are preserved. (2) The CT method smoothes out more
than LS or MD. (3) In the noisy case, the CT and MD
remove all the noise, while the LS cannot. These obser-
vations indicate that the morphological filter is a better
choice for signal smoothing than the linear or median
smoothing.
2.2. Edge Extraction
In this section, an effective edge extraction scheme
based on the morphological transformation is proposed
and its validity is investigated. The edge extraction
operator is defined as follows:
f ed
(5)
= Max { LS ( f ( n ) ) – f ( n ) , Min { e r ( n ), d r ( n ) } },
where fed is the extracted edge information, f is an input
signal such as an image, and LS(.) is the linear operator
defined in Eq. (4). The size of the linear smoothing
mask is the same as the size of the structuring function
used in the erosion and dilation residues. The erosion
residue er is defined as
(1) e r = f – ( fΘk ), (6)
where k is a structuring function with a flat top and zero
height, f is the input signal, and Θ is the morphological
erosion operator. The dilation residue dr is defined as
dr = ( f ⊕ k ) – f , (7)
where f and k are the same as in the erosion residue and
⊕ is the morphological dilation operator. We list some
properties of the proposed edge extraction operator to
support the validity of the operator.
(2) Property 3. If input signal f (n) is constant over the
size of the mask (or support K of the structuring func-
tion) and the structuring function has a flat top with
zero height, then the extracted edge information
(3) fed(n) = 0.
Proof: By definition, fed = Max{|LS( f (n)) – f (n)|,
Min{er(n), dr(n)}}. If f (n) is constant over the mask
Vol. 16 No. 3 2006
408 HUANG, WANG

area, then LS(f(n)) = 0, and |LS(f(n)) – f(n)| = 0. If f(n) By definition,

is constant over the support K of the structuring func- ( N k – 1 )/2
tion, then mini ∈ K f(n + i) = f(n) and maxi ∈ K f(n – i) =
f(n) hold, and thus er = f – (fΘk) = f(n) – mini ∈ K f(n + LS ( f ( n ) ) = 1/N k ∑ f ( n – n i ), (12)
i) = 0. Similarly, it can be derived that dr = (f ⊕ k) – f = 0. n i = – ( N k – 1 )/2

Thus, we have fed = Max{|LS(f(n)) – f(n)|, LS ( u ( n ) )

Min{er(n), dr(n)}} = 0.
⎧ 0 if n ≤ n 0 – n j , n j ≥ ( N k + 1 )/2,
This property shows that our edge extractor has the ⎪
property that the edge detected is 0 if there is no edge. ⎪ C if n ≥ n 0 + n j , n j ≥ ( N k + 1 )/2,
⎪
Property 4. If the input signal f(n) is not constant ⎪ ( N k + 2n j + 1 )C/ ( 2N k ) if n ≥ n 0 + n j , (13)
over the size of the mask (or support K of the structur- = ⎨
ing function) and the structuring function has a flat top ⎪ 0 ≤ n j < ( N k + 1 )/2,
with zero height, then, for at least one point n' ∈ K, we ⎪
have fed(n') > 0. ⎪ ( N k – 2n j + 1 )C/ ( 2N k ) if n ≤ n 0 – n j ,
⎪ 1 ≤ n < ( N + 1 )/2.
Proof: By definition, fed = Max[|LS(f(n)) – f(n)|, ⎩ j k

Min[er(n), dr(n)]]. If f(n) is not constant over the mask

area, then we can find at least two points n1, n2 ∈ K,
f(n1) ≠ f(n2) in the mask area such that LS(f(n1)) – f(n1)
≠ 0 or LS(f(n2)) – f(n2) ≠ 0. Let us assume the point n'
∈ K to be n1 or n2. Then, |LS(f(n')) – f(n')| > 0.
We have fed(n') = Max[|LS(f(n')) – f(n')|, Min[er(n'),
dr(n')]] > 0.
This property shows our edge extractor has the
property that, if there is an edge (not flat a surface), then
the edge detected is greater than 0.
Property 5. If f(n) is a step edge u(n) defined as
⎧ C if n ≥ n 0 ,
u(n) = ⎨
⎩ 0 otherwise,
where C is a positive constant value and the size of the
mask is odd (≥3), then fed(n0 – 1) = fed(n0) > 0 and those
two points have the maximum value.
Proof: By definition, we have
⎧ f ed(n) = Max [ LS( f (n)) – f (n) , Min [ e r(n), d r(n) ] ],
⎪ e (n) = ( f (n) – ( f (n)Θk ) ) = f (n) – min f (n + i),
⎨ r i∈K
(9)
⎪ confirms that our edge extractor is an unbiased two-
⎩ d r ( n ) = ( f (n) ⊕ k ) – f (n) = max f (n – i) – f (n),
i∈K
where k is a structuring function with a flat top with
zero height and K is the support of the structuring func-
tion. Let Nk be the size of the mask or structuring func-
tion. If f(n) = u(n), then we have
⎧ C if n 0 ≤ n ≤ n 0 + [ ( N k – 3 )/2 ],
er ( n ) = ⎨
⎩ 0 otherwise.
⎧ C if n 0 – [ ( N k – 3 )/2 ] ≤ n ≤ n 0 – 1,
dr(n) = ⎨ (11)
⎩ 0 otherwise.
From Eqs. (10) and (11), we get Min[er(n), dr(n)] = 0.
Let LSr(f(n)) = |LS(u(n)) – u(n)|. Then,
( N k – 1 ) > 0, (14)
LS r ( u ( n 0 ) ) = LS r ( u ( n 0 – 1 ) ) = -------------------
-
2N k
and
f ed ( n 0 ) = f ed ( n 0 – 1 ) > 0. (15)
We have
⎧ LS r ( u ( n 0 ) ) > LS r ( u ( n 0 + n j ) ), n j > 0,
⎨ (16)
⎩ LS r ( u ( n 0 – 1 ) ) > LS r ( u ( n 0 – n j ) ), n j > 1.
This implies
(8)
⎧ f ed ( n 0 ) > f ed ( n 0 + n j ), n j > 0,
⎨ (17)
⎩ f ed ( n 0 – 1 ) > f ed ( n 0 – n j ), n j > 1.
Thus, fed(n0) = fed(n0 – 1) > 0, and these two points have
the maximum value.
This property shows that our edge extractor extracts
two pixels with the maximum value in the masked area
for the step edge and that these two edge pixels are at a
higher and lower gray-scales of that edge. This property
pixel edge detector for an ideal step edge.
Property 6. If f(n) is a ramp edge r(n) defined as
⎧ C if n ≥ n i
⎪
r ( n ) = ⎨ C ( n – n 0 )/ ( n i – n 0 ) if n 0 < n < n i , (18)
⎪
⎩ 0 otherwise,
(10)
where C is a positive constant value and the size of the
mask is odd (≥3), then the edge detected at the middle
point, nm, is greater than zero, i.e., fed(nm) > 0, where
m = ⎣(i + 1)/2⎦ and ⎣x⎦ denotes the largest integer part
of x.
Proof: By definition, fed(n) = Max{|LS(f(n)) – f(n)|,
Min{er(n), dr(n)}}.

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 AN INTEGRATED EDGE DETECTION METHOD USING MATHEMATICAL MORPHOLOGY 409

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 1. Artificial test images: (a) the clean image, (b) the noisy version with SNR 10dB, (c) the noisy version with SNR 7dB.

Fig. 2. Edge detection results of Fig. 1 using the proposed method.

Fig. 3. Edge detection results of Fig. 1 using the blur-minimum method.

Let f(n) = r(n). Then, LSr(r(n)) = |LS(r(n)) – r(n)| ≥
0, ∀n. If LSr(r(nm)) > 0, then fed(nm) > 0 holds. If
LSr(r(nm)) = 0, then we need to show Min[er(nm),
dr(nm)]] > 0 first, then we can get fed(nm) > 0.
By definition, r(n) = C if n ≥ ni, C(n – n0)/(ni – n0) if
n0 < n < ni, 0 otherwise.
We have r(nm) = C(nm – n0)/(N – n0) > 0, er(nm) =
r(nm) – Minj ∈ Kr(nm + j) > 0, and dr(nm) = Maxj ∈ Kr(nm –
j) – r(nm) > 0, where K is the support of the structuring
function. We get Min[er(nm), dr(nm)]] > 0.
This property confirms that our edge extractor
detects the middle point of the ramp edge.
2.3. Edge Decision
In addition to the edge information, the image con-
tains many spurious pixels, illustrating the problem
associated with thresholding the edge information. The
simplest thresholding technique would be to select a
single value Th and assign all pixels with an edge
strength above the selected value Th to the set of edge
pixel. But in real image it seems hard to select a single
threshold value that will extract the edge without spuri-
ous noise.
In order to solve this problem, we apply a morpho-
logical operator Rm to the extracted edge first and then

PATTERN RECOGNITION AND IMAGE ANALYSIS Vol. 16 No. 3 2006

410 HUANG, WANG

Fig. 4. Real test images: Lena, House.

Fig. 5. Edge detection results of Fig. 4 using the proposed method.

Fig. 6. Edge detection results of Fig. 4 using the blur-minimum method.

thresholding to get a binary signal. The morphological
operator Rm is defined as
R m ( n ) = f ed ( n ) – Min [ oc ( f ed ( n ) ), f ed ( n ) ],
where fed denotes the extracted edge information image,
oc is the opening–closing operation, and Min[x]
denotes the minimum of x.
Property 7. Rm(n) is a nonnegative value for all n.
The property can be shown easily by using the anti-
extensive property of the oc filter. The advantage of this
(19) operator is not only that it can be used to select the
peaks of interest but also that it is above most of the tex-
ture. Thus, this operator can be used for prethreshold-
ing purposes. The width of the structuring function
used in this stage should not be more than that used in
the edge extraction. Then, to determine the edge pixel

PATTERN RECOGNITION AND IMAGE ANALYSIS Vol. 16 No. 3 2006

 AN INTEGRATED EDGE DETECTION METHOD USING MATHEMATICAL MORPHOLOGY
in the image, just set a single threshold value Th is nec-
essary. The thresholding is
⎧ C if R m > Th,
F = ⎨ (20)
⎩ 0 otherwise,
where F is a binary signal or image, C is a fixed con-
stant (C > 0), for the binary image case C = 1, Rm is the
morphological operation signal, and Th is set to a small
constant.
2.4. Postprocessing
Although the edge can theoretically be correctly
detected, in practice the resulting edge image will have
some broken and isolated edge pixels. If we assumed
edges are connected and not isolated, then some kind of
noise removal and edge growing is required to improve
the quality. This procedure can be efficiently performed
using morphological operators. Since the image in this
step is already a binary image, the morphological oper-
ator is also binary. The hit-or-miss transformation [9] is
proposed to remove the spurious noise and to grow bro-
ken edges by designing proper structuring element
pairs.
The hit-or-miss transformation is defined as
F ⊗ S ( n ) = ( FΘA ) ∩ ( F ΘB ),
c
(21)
where F is a binary image, S is a structuring element
pair S = (A, B) (one to probe the inside and one to probe
the outside of F), Fc is the complement of F, and ∩ is a
logical AND operator. It is assumed that A and B are
disjoint, or otherwise it is impossible for both fits to
occur simultaneously. Since the hit-or-miss transforma-
tion is a pattern-matching process, so it can be used to
locate the desired pattern for removal or recovery.
3. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
In this section, two experiments are conducted to
test the validity of the proposed method. A structuring
function of dimensions 3 × 3 with a flat top and zero
height is used in the experiments. In the first test, an
artificial checkerboard image and two of its noisy ver-
sions shown in Fig. 1 are selected to test the algorithm.
Figures 1b and 1c show added Gaussian noise to Fig. 1a
with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 10.0 and 7.0 dB,
respectively. The edge detection results of the proposed
algorithm and the blur-minimum method [2] are shown
in Figs. 2 and 3, respectively. These results indicate that
the visual quality of these two methods in the “clean”
artificial images is almost the same. However, the edge
detection results using the proposed method are more
insensitive to noise.
In the second test, we apply the algorithm to popular
real test images of Lena and House, shown in Fig. 4.
The edge detection results using the proposed method
and the blur-minimum method are shown in Figs. 5 and
PATTERN RECOGNITION AND IMAGE ANALYSIS Vol. 16
411
6, respectively. Figure 6 indicates that some thin edges
are lost and the detected edges appear fuzzy when using
the blur-minimum based method. Figure 5 shows that
the proposed method successfully detects the edges of
the test images. The results indicate that the proposed
algorithm is effective in the edge detection of complex
images. A visual evaluation gives the impression that
the proposed algorithm has a better performance in the
test images.
4. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, the problem of edge detection using a
morphological approach has been studied. Existing
methods for edge detection emphasize the edge extrac-
tion only. In this paper, we use morphological
approaches to solve the edge detection problem with a
more complete and robust solution. We show theoreti-
cally the correctness and effectiveness for the proposed
method in manipulating ideal edges. Experimental
results are also provided to show the validity and high
performance of our method in practice for artificial and
real images.
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Chin-Pan Huang was born in
1959 in Taiwan, Republic of China.
He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees
in electrical engineering from Chung
Cheng Institute of Technology, Tai-
wan, in 1981 and in 1985, respec-
tively. In 1996, he received the Ph.D.
degree in electrical engineering from
the University of Pittsburgh in the
United States. From 1996 to 2002, he
was an associate scientist of the Elec-
tronic System Division in Chung Shan
Institute of Science and Technology. He then joined the
Department of Computer and Communication Engineering at
Ming Chuan University in August 2002 and is currently an
assistant professor there. His recent research interests include
data compression, computer vision, digital image processing,
and pattern recognition.
PATTERN RECOGNITION AND IMAGE ANALYSIS
Trans. on Pattern Analysis, and Machine Intelligence 9,
532–550 (1987).
15. T. Meier and K. N. Ngan, “Video Segmentation for Con-
tent-Based Coding,” IEEE Trans. on Circuit and Systems
for Video Technology 9, 1190–1203 (1999).
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Image,” J. of ACM 23, 599–618 (1976).
Ran-Zan Wang was born in 1972
in Fukien, Republic of China. He
received his B.S. degree in computer
engineering and science in 1994 and
M.S. degree in electrical engineering
and computer science in 1996, both
from Yuan-Ze University. In 2001, he
received his Ph.D. degree in computer
and information science from
National Chiao Tung University. In
2001–2002, he was an assistant pro-
fessor at the Department of Computer
Engineering at the Van Nung Institute of Technology. He
joined the Department of Computer and Communication
Engineering at Ming Chuan University in August 2002 and is
currently an assistant professor there. His recent research
interests include data hiding and digital watermarking, image
processing, and pattern recognition. Dr. Wang is a member of
the Phi Tau Phi Scholastic Honor Society.
Vol. 16 No. 3 2006