MORPHOLOGICAL MOMENTS OF BINARY IMAGES

Abstract. The concept of morphological moments of binary images is introduced. Morphological moments can be used as a shape descriptor combining an integral width description of an object with a description of its spatial distribution. The relationship between the proposed descriptor and the disc cover of the figure is discussed and an exact analytical method for descriptor calculation is proposed within the continuous morphology framework. The approach is based on the approximation of the shape by a polygonal figure and the extraction of its medial representation in the form of the continuous skeleton and the radial function. The proposed method for calculation of morphological moments achieves high accuracy and it is computationally efficient. Experimentations have been conducted. Obtained results indicate that the morphological moments are a more informative and rich shape descriptor than the area of the disc cover. Application of morphological moments to the font recognition task improves the recognition quality.