Blood vessel:

The blood vessels are the part of the circulatory system that transport blood throughout the body.

There are three major types of blood vessels: the arteries, which carry the blood away from the

heart; the capillaries, which enable the actual exchange of water and chemicals between the

blood and the tissues; and the veins, which carry blood from the capillaries back toward the

heart.

Anatomy

The arteries and veins have the same structure with three layers, from inside to outside.

 Tunica intima (the thinnest layer): a single layer of simple squamous endothelial cells

glued by a polysaccharide intercellular matrix, surrounded by a thin layer of

subendothelial connective tissue interlaced with a number of circularly arranged elastic

bands called the internal elastic lamina.

 Tunica media (the thickest layer): circularly arranged elastic fiber, connective tissue,

polysaccharide substances, the second and third layer are separated by another thick

elastic band called external elastic lamina. The tunica media may (especially in arteries)

be rich in vascular smooth muscle, which controls the caliber of the vessel.

 Tunica adventitia: entirely made of connective tissue. It also contains nerves that supply

the vessel as well as nutrient capillaries (vasa vasorum) in the larger blood vessels.

Capillaries consist of little more than a layer of endothelium and occasional connective tissue.
When blood vessels connect to form a region of diffuse vascular supply it is called an

anastomosis (pl. anastomoses). Anastomoses provide critical alternative routes for blood to flow

in case of blockages.

Types

Blood vessel with an erythrocyte (E) within its lumen, endothelial cells forming its tunica intima,

and pericytes forming its tunica adventitia.

There are various kinds of blood vessels:

 Arteries

o Aorta (the largest artery, carries blood out of the heart)

o Branches of the aorta, such as the carotid artery, the subclavian artery, the celiac

trunk, the mesenteric arteries, the renal artery and the iliac artery.

 Arterioles

 Capillaries (the smallest blood vessels)

 Venules

 Veins
 o Large collecting vessels, such as the subclavian vein, the jugular vein, the renal

vein and the iliac vein.

o Venae cavae (the 2 largest veins, carry blood into the heart)

They are roughly grouped as arterial and venous, determined by whether the blood in it is

flowing away from (arterial) or toward (venous) the heart. The term "arterial blood" is

nevertheless used to indicate blood high in oxygen, although the pulmonary artery carries

"venous blood" and blood flowing in the pulmonary vein is rich in oxygen. This is because they

are carrying the blood to and from the lungs, respectively, to be oxygenated.

Physiology:
Blood vessels do not actively engage in the transport of blood (they have no appreciable

peristalsis), but arteries - and veins to a degree - can regulate their inner diameter by contraction

of the muscular layer. This changes the blood flow to downstream organs, and is determined by

the autonomic nervous system. Vasodilation and vasoconstriction are also used antagonistically

as methods of thermoregulation.

Oxygen (bound to hemoglobin in red blood cells) is the most critical nutrient carried by the

blood. In all arteries apart from the pulmonary artery, hemoglobin is highly saturated (95-100%)

with oxygen. In all veins apart from the pulmonary vein, the hemoglobin is desaturated at about

75%. (The values are reversed in the pulmonary circulation.)

The blood pressure in blood vessels is traditionally expressed in millimetres of mercury (1

mmHg = 133 Pa). In the arterial system, this is usually around 120 mmHg systolic (high pressure
wave due to contraction of the heart) and 80 mmHg diastolic (low pressure wave). In contrast,

pressures in the venous system are constant and rarely exceed 10 mmHg.

Vasoconstriction is the constriction of blood vessels (narrowing, becoming smaller in cross-

sectional area) by contracting the vascular smooth muscle in the vessel walls. It is regulated by

vasoconstrictors (agents that cause vasoconstriction). These include paracrine factors (e.g.

prostaglandins), a number of hormones (e.g. vasopressin and angiotensin) and neurotransmitters

(e.g. epinephrine) from the nervous system.

Vasodilation is a similar process mediated by antagonistically acting mediators. The most

prominent vasodilator is nitric oxide (termed endothelium-derived relaxing factor for this

reason).

Permeability of the endothelium is pivotal in the release of nutrients to the tissue. It is also

increased in inflammation in response to histamine, prostaglandins and interleukins, which leads

to most of the symptoms of inflammation (swelling, redness and warmth).

Role in disease

Blood vessels play a role in virtually every medical condition. Cancer, for example, cannot

progress unless the tumor causes angiogenesis (formation of new blood vessels) to supply the

malignant cells' metabolic demand. Atherosclerosis, the formation of lipid lumps (atheromas) in

the blood vessel wall, is the most common cardiovascular disease, the main cause of death in the

Western world.
Blood vessel permeability is increased in inflammation. Damage, due to trauma or

spontaneously, may lead to haemorrhage due to mechanical damage to the vessel endothelium.

In contrast, occlusion of the blood vessel by atherosclerotic plaque, by an embolised blood clot

or a foreign body leads to downstream ischemia (insufficient blood supply) and possibly

necrosis. Vessel occlusion tends to be a positive feedback system; an occluded vessel creates

eddies in the normally laminar flow or plug flow blood currents. These eddies create abnormal

fluid velocity gradients which push blood elements such as cholesterol or chylomicron bodies to

the endothelium. These deposit onto the arterial walls which are already partially occluded and

build upon the blockage.

Vasculitis is inflammation of the vessel wall, due to autoimmune disease or infection

Segmentation (image processing)

In computer vision, segmentation refers to the process of partitioning a digital image into

multiple segments (sets of pixels, also known as superpixels). The goal of segmentation is to

simplify and/or change the representation of an image into something that is more meaningful

and easier to analyze. Image segmentation is typically used to locate objects and boundaries

(lines, curves, etc.) in images. More precisely, image segmentation is the process of assigning a

label to every pixel in an image such that pixels with the same label share certain visual

characteristics.

The result of image segmentation is a set of segments that collectively cover the entire image, or

a set of contours extracted from the image (see edge detection). Each of the pixels in a region are
similar with respect to some characteristic or computed property, such as color, intensity, or

texture. Adjacent regions are significantly different with respect to the same characteristic(s).

Applications

Some of the practical applications of image segmentation are:

 Medical Imaging

o Locate tumors and other pathologies

o Measure tissue volumes

o Computer-guided surgery

o Diagnosis

o Treatment planning

o Study of anatomical structure

 Locate objects in satellite images (roads, forests, etc.)

 Face recognition

 Fingerprint recognition

 Traffic control systems

 Brake light detection

 Machine vision

Several general-purpose algorithms and techniques have been developed for image

segmentation. Since there is no general solution to the image segmentation problem, these

techniques often have to be combined with domain knowledge in order to effectively solve an

image segmentation problem for a problem domain.

Clustering methods

The K-means algorithm is an iterative technique that is used to partition an image into K clusters.

The basic algorithm is:

1. Pick K cluster centers, either randomly or based on some heuristic

2. Assign each pixel in the image to the cluster that minimizes the variance between the

pixel and the cluster center

3. Re-compute the cluster centers by averaging all of the pixels in the cluster

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until convergence is attained (e.g. no pixels change clusters)

In this case, variance is the squared or absolute difference between a pixel and a cluster center.

The difference is typically based on pixel color, intensity, texture, and location, or a weighted

combination of these factors. K can be selected manually, randomly, or by a heuristic.

This algorithm is guaranteed to converge, but it may not return the optimal solution. The quality

of the solution depends on the initial set of clusters and the value of K.

In statistics and machine learning, the k-means algorithm is clustering algorithm to partition n

objects into k clusters, where k < n. It is similar to the expectation-maximization algorithm for

mixtures of Gaussians in that they both attempt to find the centers of natural clusters in the data.

The model requires that the object attributes correspond to elements of a vector space. The

objective it tries to achieve is to minimize total intra-cluster variance, or, the squared error

function. The k-means clustering was invented in 1956. The most common form of the algorithm

uses an iterative refinement heuristic known as Lloyd's algorithm. Lloyd's algorithm starts by

partitioning the input points into k initial sets, either at random or using some heuristic data. It
then calculates the mean point, or centroid, of each set. It constructs a new partition by

associating each point with the closest centroid. Then the centroids are recalculated for the new

clusters, and algorithm repeated by alternate application of these two steps until convergence,

which is obtained when the points no longer switch clusters (or alternatively centroids are no

longer changed). Lloyd's algorithm and k-means are often used synonymously, but in reality

Lloyd's algorithm is a heuristic for solving the k-means problem, as with certain combinations of

starting points and centroids, Lloyd's algorithm can in fact converge to the wrong answer. Other

variations exist, but Lloyd's algorithm has remained popular, because it converges extremely

quickly in practice. In terms of performance the algorithm is not guaranteed to return a global

optimum. The quality of the final solution depends largely on the initial set of clusters, and may,

in practice, be much poorer than the global optimum. Since the algorithm is extremely fast, a

common method is to run the algorithm several times and return the best clustering found. A

drawback of the k-means algorithm is that the number of clusters k is an input parameter. An

inappropriate choice of k may yield poor results. The algorithm also assumes that the variance is

an appropriate measure of cluster scatter.

Histogram-based methods

Histogram-based methods are very efficient when compared to other image segmentation

methods because they typically require only one pass through the pixels. In this technique, a

histogram is computed from all of the pixels in the image, and the peaks and valleys in the

histogram are used to locate the clusters in the image.[1] Color or intensity can be used as the

measure.
A refinement of this technique is to recursively apply the histogram-seeking method to clusters

in the image in order to divide them into smaller clusters. This is repeated with smaller and

smaller clusters until no more clusters are formed.[1][3]

One disadvantage of the histogram-seeking method is that it may be difficult to identify

significant peaks and valleys in the image. In this technique of image classification distance

metric and integrated region matching are familiar.

Edge detection

Edge detection is a well-developed field on its own within image processing. Region boundaries

and edges are closely related, since there is often a sharp adjustment in intensity at the region

boundaries. Edge detection techniques have therefore been used as the base of another

segmentation technique.

The edges identified by edge detection are often disconnected. To segment an object from an

image however, one needs closed region boundaries.

Region growing methods

The first region growing method was the seeded region growing method. This method takes a set

of seeds as input along with the image. The seeds mark each of the objects to be segmented. The

regions are iteratively grown by comparing all unallocated neighbouring pixels to the regions.

The difference between a pixel's intensity value and the region's mean, δ, is used as a measure of

similarity. The pixel with the smallest difference measured this way is allocated to the respective

region. This process continues until all pixels are allocated to a region.
Seeded region growing requires seeds as additional input. The segmentation results are

dependent on the choice of seeds. Noise in the image can cause the seeds to be poorly placed.

Unseeded region growing is a modified algorithm that doesn't require explicit seeds. It starts off

with a single region A1 – the pixel chosen here does not significantly influence final

segmentation. At each iteration it considers the neighbouring pixels in the same way as seeded

region growing. It differs from seeded region growing in that if the minimum δ is less than a

predefined threshold T then it is added to the respective region Aj. If not, then the pixel is

considered significantly different from all current regions Ai and a new region An + 1 is created

with this pixel.

One variant of this technique, proposed by Haralick and Shapiro (1985), is based on pixel

intensities. The mean and scatter of the region and the intensity of the candidate pixel is used to

compute a test statistic. If the test statistic is sufficiently small, the pixel is added to the region,

and the region’s mean and scatter are recomputed. Otherwise, the pixel is rejected, and is used to

form a new region.

Level set methods

Curve propagation is a popular technique in image analysis for object extraction, object tracking,

stereo reconstruction, etc. The central idea behind such an approach is to evolve a curve towards

the lowest potential of a cost function, where its definition reflects the task to be addressed and

imposes certain smoothness constraints. Lagrangian techniques are based on parameterizing the

contour according to some sampling strategy and then evolve each element according to image

and internal terms. While such a technique can be very efficient, it suffers from various
limitations like deciding on the sampling strategy, estimating the internal geometric properties of

the curve, changing its topology, addressing problems in higher dimensions, etc.

The level set method was initially proposed to track moving interfaces by Osher and Sethian in

1988 and has spread across various imaging domains in the late nineties. It can be used to

efficiently address the problem of curve/surface/etc. propagation in an implicit manner. The

central idea is to represent the evolving contour using a signed function, where its zero level

corresponds to the actual contour. Then, according to the motion equation of the contour, one can

easily derive a similar flow for the implicit surface that when applied to the zero-level will reflect

the propagation of the contour. The level set method encodes numerous advantages: it is implicit,

parameter free, provides a direct way to estimate the geometric properties of the evolving

structure, can change the topology and is intrinsic. Furthermore, they can be used to define an

optimization framework as proposed by Zhao, Merriman and Osher in 1996. Therefore, one can

conclude that it is a very convenient framework to address numerous applications of computer

vision and medical image analysis.[4] Furthermore, research into various level set data structures

has led to very efficient implementations of this method.

Graph partitioning methods

Graph partitioning methods can effectively be used for image segmentation. In these methods,

the image is modeled as a weighted, undirected graph. Usually a pixel or a group of pixels are

associated with nodes and edge weights define the (dis)similarity between the neighborhood

pixels. The graph (image) is then partitioned according to a criterion designed to model "good"

clusters. Each partition of the nodes (pixels) output from these algorithms are considered an
[5]
object segment in the image. Some popular algorithms of this category are normalized cuts ,
random walker, minimum cut, isoperimetric partitioning and minimum spanning tree-based

segmentation.

Watershed transformation

The watershed transformation considers the gradient magnitude of an image as a topographic

surface. Pixels having the highest gradient magnitude intensities (GMIs) correspond to watershed

lines, which represent the region boundaries. Water placed on any pixel enclosed by a common

watershed line flows downhill to a common local intensity minimum (LIM). Pixels draining to a

common minimum form a catch basin, which represents a segment.

Model based segmentation

The central assumption of such an approach is that structures of interest/organs have a repetitive

form of geometry. Therefore, one can seek for a probabilistic model towards explaining the

variation of the shape of the organ and then when segmenting an image impose constraints using

this model as prior. Such a task involves (i) registration of the training examples to a common

pose, (ii) probabilistic representation of the variation of the registered samples, and (iii)

statistical inference between the model and the image. State of the art methods in the literature

for knowledge-based segmentation involve active shape and appearance models, active contours

and deformable templates and level-set based methods.

Multi-scale segmentation

Image segmentations are computed at multiple scales in scale-space and sometimes propagated

from coarse to fine scales; see scale-space segmentation.

Segmentation criteria can be arbitrarily complex and may take into account global as well as

local criteria. A common requirement is that each region must be connected in some sense.

One-dimensional hierarchical signal segmentation

Witkin's seminal work in scale space included the notion that a one-dimensional signal could be

unambiguously segmented into regions, with one scale parameter controlling the scale of

segmentation.

A key observation is that the zero-crossings of the second derivatives (minima and maxima of

the first derivative or slope) of multi-scale-smoothed versions of a signal form a nesting tree,

which defines hierarchical relations between segments at different scales. Specifically, slope

extrema at coarse scales can be traced back to corresponding features at fine scales. When a

slope maximum and slope minimum annihilate each other at a larger scale, the three segments

that they separated merge into one segment, thus defining the hierarchy of segments.

Image segmentation and primal sketch

There have been numerous research works in this area, out of which a few have now reached a

state where they can be applied either with interactive manual intervention (usually with
application to medical imaging) or fully automatically. The following is a brief overview of

some of the main research ideas that current approaches are based upon.

The nesting structure that Within described is, however, specific for one-dimensional signals and

does not trivially transfer to higher-dimensional images. Nevertheless, this general idea has

inspired several other authors to investigate coarse-to-fine schemes for image segmentation.

Koenderink proposed to study how iso-intensity contours evolve over scales and this approach

was investigated in more detail by Lifshitz and Pizer. Unfortunately, however, the intensity of

image features changes over scales, which implies that it is hard to trace coarse-scale image

features to finer scales using iso-intensity information.

Lindeberg studied the problem of linking local extrema and saddle points over scales, and

proposed an image representation called the scale-space primal sketch which makes explicit the

relations between structures at different scales, and also makes explicit which image features are

stable over large ranges of scale including locally appropriate scales for those. Bergholm

proposed to detect edges at coarse scales in scale-space and then trace them back to finer scales

with manual choice of both the coarse detection scale and the fine localization scale.

Gauch and Pizer studied the complementary problem of ridges and valleys at multiple scales and

developed a tool for interactive image segmentation based on multi-scale watersheds. The use of

multi-scale watershed with application to the gradient map has also been investigated by Olsen

and Nielsen and been carried over to clinical use by Dam Vincken et al. proposed a hyperstack

for defining probabilistic relations between image structures at different scales. The use of stable

image structures over scales has been furthered by Ahuja[20] and his co-workers into a fully

automated system.
More recently, these ideas for multi-scale image segmentation by linking image structures over

scales have been picked up by Florack and Kuijper. Bijaoui and Rué associate structures detected

in scale-space above a minimum noise threshold into an object tree which spans multiple scales

and corresponds to a kind of feature in the original signal. Extracted features are accurately

reconstructed using an iterative conjugate gradient matrix method.

Semi-automatic segmentation

In this kind of segmentation, the user outlines the region of interest with the mouse clicks and

algorithms are applied so that the path that best fits the edge of the image is shown.

Techniques like Siox, Livewire, or Intelligent Scissors are used in this kind of segmentation.

Neural networks segmentation

Neural Network segmentation relies on processing small areas of an image using an artificial
[23]
neural network or a set of neural networks. After such processing the decision-making

mechanism marks the areas of an image accordingly to the category recognized by the neural

network. A type of network designed especially for this is the Kohonen map.

Pulse-Coupled Neural Networks (PCNNs) are neural models proposed by modeling a cat’s visual

cortex and developed for high-performance biomimetic image processing. In 1989, Eckhorn

introduced a neural model to emulate the mechanism of cat’s visual cortex. The Eckhorn model

provided a simple and effective tool for studying small mammal’s visual cortex, and was soon

recognized as having significant application potential in image processing. In 1994, the Eckhorn

model was adapted to be an image processing algorithm by Johnson, who termed this algorithm
Pulse-Coupled Neural Network. Over the past decade, PCNNs have been utilized for a variety of

image processing applications, including: image segmentation, feature generation, face

extraction, motion detection, region growing, noise reduction, and so on. A PCNN is a two-

dimensional neural network. Each neuron in the network corresponds to one pixel in an input

image, receiving its corresponding pixel’s color information (e.g. intensity) as an external

stimulus. Each neuron also connects with its neighboring neurons, receiving local stimuli from

them. The external and local stimuli are combined in an internal activation system, which

accumulates the stimuli until it exceeds a dynamic threshold, resulting in a pulse output. Through

iterative computation, PCNN neurons produce temporal series of pulse outputs. The temporal

series of pulse outputs contain information of input images and can be utilized for various image

processing applications, such as image segmentation and feature generation. Compared with

conventional image processing means, PCNNs have several significant merits, including

robustness against noise, independence of geometric variations in input patterns, capability of

bridging minor intensity variations in input patterns, etc.

Fuzzy Logic

Fuzzy logic is a form of multi-valued logic derived from fuzzy set theory to deal with reasoning

that is approximate rather than precise. In contrast with "crisp logic", where binary sets have

binary logic, fuzzy logic variables may have a truth value that ranges between 0 and 1 and is not

constrained to the two truth values of classic propositional logic. Furthermore, when linguistic

variables are used, these degrees may be managed by specific functions.

Fuzzy logic emerged as a consequence of the 1965 proposal of fuzzy set theory by Lotfi Zadeh.

Though fuzzy logic has been applied to many fields, from control theory to artificial intelligence,
it still remains controversial among most statisticians, who prefer Bayesian logic, and some

control engineers, who prefer traditional two-valued logic.

Degrees of truth

Fuzzy logic and probabilistic logic are mathematically similar – both have truth values ranging

between 0 and 1 – but conceptually distinct, due to different interpretations -- see interpretations

of probability theory. Fuzzy logic corresponds to "degrees of truth", while probabilistic logic

corresponds to "probability, likelihood"; as these differ, fuzzy logic and probabilistic logic yield

different models of the same real-world situations.

Both degrees of truth and probabilities range between 0 and 1 and hence may seem similar at

first. For example, let a 100 ml glass contain 30 ml of water. Then we may consider two

concepts: Empty and Full. The meaning of each of them can be represented by a certain fuzzy

set. Then one might define the glass as being 0.7 empty and 0.3 full. Note that the concept of

emptiness would be subjective and thus would depend on the observer or designer. Another

designer might equally well design a set membership function where the glass would be

considered full for all values down to 50 ml. It is essential to realize that fuzzy logic uses truth

degrees as a mathematical model of the vagueness phenomenon while probability is a

mathematical model of randomness. A probabilistic setting would first define a scalar variable

for the fullness of the glass, and second, conditional distributions describing the probability that

someone would call the glass full given a specific fullness level. This model, however, has no

sense without accepting occurrence of some event, e.g. that after a few minutes, the glass will be
half empty. Note that the conditioning can be achieved by having a specific observer that

randomly selects the level for the glass, a distribution over deterministic observers, or both.

Consequently, probability has nothing in common with fuzziness, these are simply different

concepts which superficially seem similar because of using the same unit interval of real

numbers [0,1]. Still, since theorems such as De Morgan's have dual applicability and properties

of random variables are analogous to properties of binary logic states, one can see where the

confusion might arise.

Applying truth values

A basic application might characterize subranges of a continuous variable. For instance, a

temperature measurement for anti-lock brakes might have several separate membership functions

defining particular temperature ranges needed to control the brakes properly. Each function maps

the same temperature value to a truth value in the 0 to 1 range. These truth values can then be

used to determine how the brakes should be controlled.

Fuzzy logic temperature

In this image, the meaning of the expressions cold, warm, and hot is represented by functions

mapping a temperature scale. A point on that scale has three "truth values" — one for each of the
three functions. The vertical line in the image represents a particular temperature that the three

arrows (truth values) gauge. Since the red arrow points to zero, this temperature may be

interpreted as "not hot". The orange arrow (pointing at 0.2) may describe it as "slightly warm"

and the blue arrow (pointing at 0.8) "fairly cold".

Linguistic variables

While variables in mathematics usually take numerical values, in fuzzy logic applications, the

non-numeric linguistic variables are often used to facilitate the expression of rules and facts.

A linguistic variable such as age may have a value such as young or its antonym old. However,

the great utility of linguistic variables is that they can be modified via linguistic hedges applied

to primary terms. The linguistic hedges can be associated with certain functions. For example, L.

A. Zadeh proposed to take the square of the membership function. This model, however, does

not work properly. For more details, see the references.

Example

Fuzzy set theory defines fuzzy operators on fuzzy sets. The problem in applying this is that the

appropriate fuzzy operator may not be known. For this reason, fuzzy logic usually uses IF-THEN

rules, or constructs that are equivalent, such as fuzzy associative matrices.

Rules are usually expressed in the form:

IF variable IS property THEN action

For example, a simple temperature regulator that uses a fan might look like this:
IF temperature IS very cold THEN stop fan

IF temperature IS cold THEN turn down fan

IF temperature IS normal THEN maintain level

IF temperature IS hot THEN speed up fan

There is no "ELSE" – all of the rules are evaluated, because the temperature might be "cold" and

"normal" at the same time to different degrees.

The AND, OR, and NOT operators of boolean logic exist in fuzzy logic, usually defined as the

minimum, maximum, and complement; when they are defined this way, they are called the

Zadeh operators. So for the fuzzy variables x and y:

NOT x = (1 - truth(x))

x AND y = minimum(truth(x), truth(y))

x OR y = maximum(truth(x), truth(y))

There are also other operators, more linguistic in nature, called hedges that can be applied. These

are generally adverbs such as "very", or "somewhat", which modify the meaning of a set using a

mathematical formula.

Logical analysis

In mathematical logic, there are several formal systems of "fuzzy logic"; most of them belong

among so-called t-norm fuzzy logics.

Propositional fuzzy logics

The most important propositional fuzzy logics are:

 Monoidal t-norm-based propositional fuzzy logic MTL is an axiomatization of logic

where conjunction is defined by a left continuous t-norm, and implication is defined as

the residuum of the t-norm. Its models correspond to MTL-algebras that are prelinear

commutative bounded integral residuated lattices.

 Basic propositional fuzzy logic BL is an extension of MTL logic where conjunction is

defined by a continuous t-norm, and implication is also defined as the residuum of the t-

norm. Its models correspond to BL-algebras.

 Łukasiewicz fuzzy logic is the extension of basic fuzzy logic BL where standard

conjunction is the Łukasiewicz t-norm. It has the axioms of basic fuzzy logic plus an

axiom of double negation, and its models correspond to MV-algebras.

 Gödel fuzzy logic is the extension of basic fuzzy logic BL where conjunction is Gödel t-

norm. It has the axioms of BL plus an axiom of idempotence of conjunction, and its

models are called G-algebras.

 Product fuzzy logic is the extension of basic fuzzy logic BL where conjunction is product

t-norm. It has the axioms of BL plus another axiom for cancellativity of conjunction, and

its models are called product algebras.

 Fuzzy logic with evaluated syntax (sometimes also called Pavelka's logic), denoted by

EVŁ, is a further generalization of mathematical fuzzy logic. While the above kinds of

fuzzy logic have traditional syntax and many-valued semantics, in EVŁ is evaluated also

syntax. This means that each formula has an evaluation. Axiomatization of EVŁ stems
 from Łukasziewicz fuzzy logic. A generalization of classical Gödel completeness

theorem is provable in EVŁ.

Predicate fuzzy logics

These extend the above-mentioned fuzzy logics by adding universal and existential quantifiers in

a manner similar to the way that predicate logic is created from propositional logic. The

semantics of the universal (resp. existential) quantifier in t-norm fuzzy logics is the infimum

(resp. supremum) of the truth degrees of the instances of the quantified subformula.

Decidability issues for fuzzy logic

The notions of a "decidable subset" and "recursively enumerable subset" are basic ones for

classical mathematics and classical logic. Then, the question of a suitable extension of such

concepts to fuzzy set theory arises. A first proposal in such a direction was made by E.S. Santos

by the notions of fuzzy Turing machine, Markov normal fuzzy algorithm and fuzzy program (see

Santos 1970). Successively, L. Biacino and G. Gerla showed that such a definition is not

adequate and therefore proposed the following one. Ü denotes the set of rational numbers in

[0,1]. A fuzzy subset s : S [0,1] of a set S is recursively enumerable if a recursive map h :

S×N Ü exists such that, for every x in S, the function h(x,n) is increasing with respect to n and

s(x) = lim h(x,n). We say that s is decidable if both s and its complement –s are recursively

enumerable. An extension of such a theory to the general case of the L-subsets is proposed in

Gerla 2006. The proposed definitions are well related with fuzzy logic. Indeed, the following

theorem holds true (provided that the deduction apparatus of the fuzzy logic satisfies some

obvious effectiveness property).

Theorem. Any axiomatizable fuzzy theory is recursively enumerable. In particular, the fuzzy set

of logically true formulas is recursively enumerable in spite of the fact that the crisp set of valid

formulas is not recursively enumerable, in general. Moreover, any axiomatizable and complete

theory is decidable.

It is an open question to give supports for a Church thesis for fuzzy logic claiming that the

proposed notion of recursive enumerability for fuzzy subsets is the adequate one. To this aim,

further investigations on the notions of fuzzy grammar and fuzzy Turing machine should be

necessary (see for example Wiedermann's paper). Another open question is to start from this

notion to find an extension of Gödel’s theorems to fuzzy logic.

Fuzzy databases

Once fuzzy relations are defined, it is possible to develop fuzzy relational databases. The first

fuzzy relational database, FRDB, appeared in Maria Zemankova's dissertation. Later, some other

models arose like the Buckles-Petry model, the Prade-Testemale Model, the Umano-Fukami

model or the GEFRED model by J.M. Medina, M.A. Vila et al. In the context of fuzzy databases,

some fuzzy querying languages have been defined, highlighting the SQLf by P. Bosc et al. and

the FSQL by J. Galindo et al. These languages define some structures in order to include fuzzy

aspects in the SQL statements, like fuzzy conditions, fuzzy comparators, fuzzy constants, fuzzy

constraints, fuzzy thresholds, linguistic labels and so on.

Application areas

Fuzzy logic is used in the operation or programming of:

  Air conditioners

 Automobile and such vehicle subsystems as automatic transmissions, ABS and cruise

control

 Tokyo monorail

 Cameras

 Digital image processing, such as edge detection

 Dishwashers

 Elevators

 Some microcontrollers and microprocessors (e.g. Freescale 68HC12)

 Hydrometeor classification algorithms for polarimetric weather radar

 Language filters on message boards and chat rooms for filtering out offensive text

 The Massive engine used in the Lord of the Rings films, which allowed large-scale

armies to enact random yet orderly movements

 Mineral Deposit estimation

 Pattern recognition in Remote Sensing

 Rice cookers

 Video game artificial intelligence

 Home appliances (e.g. washing machine)

Comparison to probability

Fuzzy logic and probability are different ways of expressing uncertainty. While both fuzzy logic

and probability theory can be used to represent subjective belief, fuzzy set theory uses the

concept of fuzzy set membership (i.e., how much a variable is in a set), probability theory uses
the concept of subjective probability (i.e., how probable do I think that a variable is in a set).

While this distinction is mostly philosophical, the fuzzy-logic-derived possibility measure is

inherently different from the probability measure, hence they are not directly equivalent.

However, many statisticians are persuaded by the work of Bruno de Finetti that only one kind of

mathematical uncertainty is needed and thus fuzzy logic is unnecessary. On the other hand, Bart

Kosko argues that probability is a subtheory of fuzzy logic, as probability only handles one kind

of uncertainty. He also claims to have proven a derivation of Bayes' theorem from the concept of

fuzzy subsethood. Lotfi Zadeh argues that fuzzy logic is different in character from probability,

and is not a replacement for it. He fuzzified probability to fuzzy probability and also generalized

it to what is called possibility theory. (cf.)

Fuzzy concept:

A fuzzy concept is a concept of which the content, value, or boundaries of application can vary

according to context or conditions, instead of being fixed once and for all.

Usually this means the concept is vague, lacking a fixed, precise meaning, without being

meaningless altogether. It does have a meaning, or multiple meanings (it has different semantic

associations), which however can become clearer only through further elaboration and

specification. Fuzzy concepts (Markusen, 2003) "lack clarity and are difficult to test or

operationalize". In logic, fuzzy concepts are often regarded as concepts which in their application

are neither completely true or completely false, or which are partly true and partly false.

Consequently, fuzzy concepts may generate uncertainty and reducing fuzziness may generate

more certainty. However, this is not necessarily so, insofar as a concept, although it is not fuzzy
at all, may fail to capture the meaning of something adequately. A concept can be very precise,

but not - or insufficiently - applicable or relevant in the situation to which it refers. A fuzzy

concept may indeed provide more security, because it provides a meaning for something when

an exact concept is unavailable - which is better than not being able to denote it at all.

Fuzzy concepts and language

Ordinary language, which uses symbolic conventions and associations which are often not

logical, inherently contains many fuzzy concepts - "knowing what you mean" in this case

depends on knowing the context or being familiar with the way in which a term is normally used,

or what it is associated with. This can be easily verified for instance by consulting a dictionary, a

thesaurus or an encyclopedia which show the multiple meanings of words, or by observing the

behaviours involved in ordinary relationships which rely on mutually understood meanings.

To communicate, receive or convey a message, an individual somehow has to bridge his own

meaning and the meanings which are understood by others, i.e. the message has to be conveyed

in a way that it will be socially understood. Thus, people might state: "you have to say it in a way

that I understand".

This may be done instinctively, habitually or unconsciously, but it usually involves a choice of

terms, assumptions or symbols whose meanings may often not be completely fixed, but which

depend among other things on how the receiver of the message responds to it, or the context. In

this sense, meaning is often "negotiated" (or, more cynically, manipulated). This gives rise to

many fuzzy concepts.

But even using ordinary set theory and binary logic to reason something out, logicians have

discovered that it is possible to generate statements which are logically speaking not completely

true or imply a paradox, even although in other respects they conform to logical rules.

Origin of fuzzy concepts

The origin of fuzzy concepts is partly due to the fact that the human brain does not operate like a

computer. While computers use strict binary logic gates, the brain does not. i.e. it is capable of

making all kinds of neural associations according to all kinds of ordering principles (or fairly

chaotically) in patterns which are not logical but nevertheless meaningful. Something can be

meaningful although we cannot name it, or we might only be able to name it and nothing else.

In part, fuzzy concepts are also due to the fact that learning or the growth of understanding

involves a transition from a vague awareness which cannot orient behaviour greatly, to clearer

insight which can orient behaviour.

Some logicians argue that fuzzy concepts are a necessary consequence of the reality that any

kind of distinction we might like to draw has limits of application. As a certain level of

generality, it works fine. But if we pursued its application in a very exact and rigorous manner,

or overextend its application, it appears that the distinction simply does not apply in some areas

or contexts, or that we cannot fully specify how it should be drawn. An analogy might be that

zooming a telescope, camera or microscope in and out reveals that a pattern which is sharply

focused at a certain distance disappears at another distance.

In psychophysics it has been discovered that the perceptual distinctions we draw in the mind are

often more sharply defined than they are in the real world. Thus, the brain actually tends to
"sharpen up" our perceptions of differences in the external world. Between black and white, we

are able to detect only a limited number of shades of gray, or colour gradations. If there are more

gradations and transitions in reality than our conceptual distinctions can capture, then it could be

argued that how those distinctions will actually apply must necessarily become vaguer at some

point. If, for example, one wants to count and quantify distinct objects using numbers, one needs

to be able to distinguish between those separate objects, but if this is difficult or impossible, then,

although this may not invalidate a quantitative procedure as such, quantification is not really

possible in practice; at best, we may be able to assume of infer indirectly a certain distribution of

quantities.

Finally, in interacting with the external world, the human mind may often encounter new, or

partly new phenomena or relationships which cannot (yet) be sharply defined given the

background knowledge available, and by known distinctions, associations or generalizations.

"Crisis management plans cannot be put 'on the fly' after the crisis occurs. At the outset,

information is often vague, even contradictory. Events move so quickly that decision makers

experience a sense of loss of control. Often denial sets in, and managers unintentionally cut off

information flow about the situation" - L. Paul Bremer, "Corporate governance and crisis

management", in: Directors & Boards, Winter 2002

It also can be argued that fuzzy concepts are generated by a certain sort of lifestyle or way of

working which evades definite distinctions, makes them impossible or inoperable, or which is in

some way chaotic. To obtain concepts which are not fuzzy, it must be possible to test out their

application in some way. But in the absence of any relevant clear distinctions, or when
everything is "in a state of flux" or in transition, it may not be possible to do so, so that the

amount of fuzziness increases.

Use of fuzzy concepts

Fuzzy concepts often play a role in the creative process of forming new concepts to understand

something. In the most primitive sense, this can be observed in infants who, through practical

experience, learn to identify, distinguish and generalise the correct application of a concept, and

relate it to other concepts.

However, fuzzy concepts may also occur in scientific, journalistic, programming and

philosophical activity, when a thinker is in the process of clarifying and defining a newly

emerging concept which is based on distinctions which, for one reason or another, cannot (yet)

be more exactly specified or validated. Fuzzy concepts are often used to denote complex

phenomena, or to describe something which is developing and changing, which might involve

shedding some old meanings and acquiring new ones.

In politics, it can be highly important and problematic how exactly a conceptual distinction is

drawn, or indeed whether a distinction is drawn at all; distinctions used in administration may be

deliberately sharpened, or kept fuzzy, due to some political motive or power relationship. A

politician may be deliberately vague about some things, and very clear and explicit about others.

The "fuzzy area" can also refer simply to a residual number of cases which cannot be allocated to

a known and identifiable group, class or set.

In translation work, fuzzy concepts are analyzed for the purpose of good translation. A concept

in one language may not have quite the same meaning or significance in another language, or it

may not be feasible to translate it literally, or at all. Some languages have concepts which do not

exist in another language, raising the problem of how one would most easily render their

meaning.

In information services fuzzy concepts are frequently encountered because a customer or client

asks a question about something which could be interpreted in many different ways, or, a

document is transmitted of a type or meaning which cannot be easily allocated to a known type

or category, or to a known procedure. It might take considerable inquiry to "place" the

information, or establish in what framework it should be understood.

It could be argued that many concepts used fairly universally in daily life (e.g. "love" or "God"

or "health" or "social") are inherently or intrinsically fuzzy concepts, to the extent that their

meaning can never be completely and exactly specified with logical operators or objective terms,

and can have multiple interpretations, which are in part exclusively subjective. Yet despite this

limitation, such concepts are not meaningless.

It may also be possible to specify one personal meaning for the concept, without however

placing restrictions on a different use of the concept in other contexts (as when, for example, one

says "this is what I mean by X" in contrast to other possible meanings). In ordinary speech,

concepts may sometimes also be uttered purely randomly; for example a child may repeat the

same idea in completely unrelated contexts, or an expletive term may be uttered arbitrarily.
Fuzzy concepts can be used deliberately to create ambiguity and vagueness, as an evasive tactic,

or to bridge what would otherwise be immediately recognized as a contradiction of terms. They

might be used to indicate that there is definitely a connection between two things, without giving

a complete specification of what the connection is, for some or other reason. This could be due to

a failure or refusal to be more precise. But it could also could be a prologue to a more exact

formulation of a concept, or a better understanding. It could also simply be a practical method to

describe something of which a complete description would be an unmanageably large

undertaking, or very time-consuming.

Analysis of fuzzy concepts

In mathematical logic, programming, philosophy and linguistics fuzzy concepts can however be

analyzed and defined more accurately or comprehensively, for instance:

 by specifying a range of conditions to which the concept applies.

 by classifying or categorizing all or most cases or uses to which the concept applies

(taxonomy).

 by identifying operational rules for the use of the concept, which cover all or most cases.

 by allocating different applications of the concept to different but related sets (e.g. using

Boolean logic).

 by examining how probable it is that the concept applies, statistically or intuitively.

 by examining the distribution or distributional frequency of (possibly different) uses of

the concept.

 by some other kind of measure or scale of the degree to which the concept applies.
  by specifying a series of logical operators (an inferential system or algorithm) which

captures all or most cases to which the concept applies.

 by mapping or graphing the applications of the concept using some basic parameters.

 by applying a meta-language which includes fuzzy concepts in a more inclusive

categorical system which is not fuzzy.

 by reducing or restating fuzzy concepts in terms which are simpler or similar, and which

are not fuzzy or less fuzzy.

 by relating the fuzzy concept to other concepts which are not fuzzy or less fuzzy, or

simply by replacing the fuzzy concept altogether with another, alternative concept which

is not fuzzy yet "works exactly the same way".

A operationalization diagram, one method of clarifing fuzzy concepts.

In this way, we can obtain a more exact understanding of the use of a fuzzy concept, and

possibly decrease the amount of fuzziness. It may not be possible to specify all the possible

meanings or applications of a concept completely and exhaustively, but if it is possible to capture

the majority of them, statistically or otherwise, this may be useful enough for practical purposes.

The difficulty that can occur in judging the fuzziness of a concept can be illustrated with the

question "Is this one of those?". If it is not possible to clearly answer this question, that could be

because "this" (the object) is itself fuzzy and evades definition, or because "one of those" (the

concept of the object) is fuzzy and inadequately defined. Thus, the source of fuzziness may be in

the nature of the reality being dealt with, the concepts used to interpret it, or the way in which the

two are being related by a person.

Mathematical morphology

A shape (in blue) and its morphological dilation (in green) and erosion (in yellow) by a diamond-

shape structuring element.

Mathematical morphology (MM) is a theory and technique for the analysis and processing of

geometrical structures, based on set theory, lattice theory, topology, and random functions. MM

is most commonly applied to digital images, but it can be employed as well on graphs, surface

meshes, solids, and many other spatial structures.

Topological and geometrical continuous-space concepts such as size, shape, convexity,

connectivity, and geodesic distance, can be characterized by MM on both continuous and

discrete spaces. MM is also the foundation of morphological image processing, which consists of

a set of operators that transform images according to the above characterizations.

MM was originally developed for binary images, and was later extended to grayscale functions

and images. The subsequent generalization to complete lattices is widely accepted today as

MM's theoretical foundation.

History

Mathematical Morphology was born in 1964 from the collaborative work of Georges Matheron

and Jean Serra, at the École des Mines de Paris, France. Matheron supervised the PhD thesis of

Serra, devoted to the quantification of mineral characteristics from thin cross sections, and this

work resulted in a novel practical approach, as well as theoretical advancements in integral

geometry and topology.

In 1968, the Centre de Morphologie Mathématique was founded by the École des Mines de Paris

in Fontainebleau, France, lead by Matheron and Serra.

During the rest of the 1960's and most of the 1970's, MM dealt essentially with binary images,

treated as sets, and generated a large number of binary operators and techniques: Hit-or-miss

transform, dilation, erosion, opening, closing, granulometry, thinning, skeletonization, ultimate

erosion, conditional bisector, and others. A random approach was also developed, based on novel

image models. Most of the work in that period was developed in Fontainebleau.
From mid-1970's to mid-1980's, MM was generalized to grayscale functions and images as well.

Besides extending the main concepts (such as dilation, erosion, etc...) to functions, this

generalization yielded new operators, such as morphological gradients, top-hat transform and the

Watershed (MM's main segmentation approach).

In the 1980's and 1990's, MM gained a wider recognition, as research centers in several countries

began to adopt and investigate the method. MM started to be applied to a large number of

imaging problems and applications.

In 1986, Jean Serra further generalized MM, this time to a theoretical framework based on

complete lattices. This generalization brought flexibility to the theory, enabling its application to

a much larger number of structures, including color images, video, graphs, meshes, etc... At the

same time, Matheron and Serra also formulated a theory for morphological filtering, based on the

new lattice framework.

The 1990's and 2000's also saw further theoretical advancements, including the concepts of

connections and levelings.

In 1993, the first International Symposium on Mathematical Morphology (ISMM) took place in

Barcelona, Spain. Since then, ISMMs are organized every 2-3 years, each time in a different part

of the world: Fontainebleau, France (1994); Atlanta, USA (1996); Amsterdam, Netherlands

(1998); Palo Alto, CA, USA (2000); Sydney, Australia (2002); Paris, France (2004); Rio de

Janeiro, Brazil (2007); and Groningen, Netherlands (2009).

Binary morphology

In binary morphology, an image is viewed as a subset of an Euclidean space or the integer

grid , for some dimension d.

Structuring element

The basic idea in binary morphology is to probe an image with a simple, pre-defined shape,

drawing conclusions on how this shape fits or misses the shapes in the image. This simple

"probe" is called structuring element, and is itself a binary image (i.e., a subset of the space or

grid).

Here are some examples of widely used structuring elements (denoted by B):

 Let ; B is an open disk of radius r, centered at the origin.

 Let ; B is a 3x3 square, that is, B={(-1,-1), (-1,0), (-1,1), (0,-1), (0,0), (0,1), (1,-

1), (1,0), (1,1)}.

 Let ; B is the "cross" given by: B={(-1,0), (0,-1), (0,0), (0,1), (1,0)}.

Basic operators

The basic operations are shift-invariant (translation invariant) operators strongly related to

Minkowski addition.

Let E be a Euclidean space or an integer grid, and A a binary image in E.

Erosion

The erosion of the dark-blue square by a disk, resulting in the light-blue square.

The erosion of the binary image A by the structuring element B is defined by:

where Bz is the translation of B by the vector z, i.e., , .

When the structuring element B has a center (e.g., B is a disk or a square), and this center is

located on the origin of E, then the erosion of A by B can be understood as the locus of points

reached by the center of B when B moves inside A. For example, the erosion of a square of side

10, centered at the origin, by a disc of radius 2, also centered at the origin, is a square of side 6

centered at the origin.

The erosion of A by B is also given by the expression: .

Example application: Assume we have received a fax of a dark photocopy. Everything looks like

it was written with a pen that is bleeding. Erosion process will allow thicker lines to get skinny

and detect the hole inside the letter "o".

Dilation

The dilation of the dark-blue square by a disk, resulting in the light-blue square with rounded

corners.

The dilation of A by the structuring element B is defined by:

The dilation is commutative, also given by:.

If B has a center on the origin, as before, then the dilation of A by B can be understood as the

locus of the points covered by B when the center of B moves inside A. In the above example, the
dilation of the square of side 10 by the disk of radius 2 is a square of side 14, with rounded

corners, centered at the origin. The radius of the rounded corners is 2.

The dilation can also be obtained by: , where Bs

denotes the symmetric of B, that is, .

Example application: Dilation is the opposite of the erosion. Figures that are very lightly drawn

get thick when "dilated". Easiest way to describe it is to imagine the same fax/text is written with

a thicker pen.

Opening

The opening of the dark-blue square by a disk, resulting in the light-blue square with round

corners.

The opening of A by B is obtained by the erosion of A by B, followed by dilation of the resulting

image by B:
 .

The opening is also given by, which means that it is the locus of translations of the structuring

element B inside the image A. In the case of the square of radius 10, and a disc of radius 2 as the

structuring element, the opening is a square of radius 10 with rounded corners, where the corner

radius is 2.

Example application: Let's assume someone has written a note on a non-soaking paper that

writing looks like it is growing tiny hairy roots all over. Opening essentially removes the outer

tiny "hairline" leaks and restores the text. The side effect is that it rounds off things. The sharp

edges start to disappear.

Closing

The closing of the dark-blue shape (union of two squares) by a disk, resulting in the union of the

dark-blue shape and the light-blue areas.

The closing of A by B is obtained by the dilation of A by B, followed by erosion of the resulting

structure by B:

The closing can also be obtained by , where Xc denotes the

complement of X relative to E (that is, ). The above means that the

closing is the complement of the locus of translations of the symmetric of the structuring element

outside the image A.

Properties of the basic operators

Here are some properties of the basic binary morphological operators (dilation, erosion, opening

and closing):

 They are translation invariant.

 They are increasing, that is, if , then , and

, etc.

 The dilation is commutative.

 If the origin of E belongs to the structuring element B, then

 The dilation is associative, i.e., . Moreover, the

erosion satisfies .

 Erosion and dilation satisfy the duality .

  Opening and closing satisfy the duality .

 The dilation is distributive over set union

 The erosion is distributive over set intersection

 The dilation is a pseudo-inverse of the erosion, and vice-versa, in the following sense:

if and only if .

 Opening and closing are idempotent.

 Opening is anti-extensive, i.e., , whereas the closing is extensive, i.e.,

Other operators and tools

 Hit-or-miss transform

 Morphological skeleton

 Filtering by reconstruction

 Ultimate erosions and conditional bisectors

 Granulometry

 Geodesic distance functions

Grayscale morphology

In grayscale morphology, images are functions mapping an Euclidean space or grid E into

, where is the set of real’s, is an element larger than any real number,

and is an element smaller than any real number.

Grayscale structuring elements are also functions of the same format, called "structuring

functions".

Denoting an image by f(x) and the structuring function by b(x), the grayscale dilation of f by b is

given by

Where "sup" denotes the supremum.

Similarly, the erosion of f by b is given by

where "inf" denotes the infimum.

Just like in binary morphology, the opening and closing are given respectively by

, and

Flat structuring functions

It is common to use flat structuring elements in morphological applications. Flat structuring

functions are functions b(x) in the form

,
where .

In this case, the dilation and erosion are greatly simplified, and given respectively by

, and

In the bounded, discrete case (E is a grid and B is bounded), the supremum and infimum

operators can be replaced by the maximum and minimum. Thus, dilation and erosion are

particular cases of order statistics filters, with dilation returning the maximum value within a

moving window (the symmetric of the structuring function support B), and the erosion returning

the minimum value within the moving window B.

In the case of flat structuring element, the morphological operators depend only on the relative

ordering of pixel values, regardless their numerical values, and therefore are especially suited to

the processing of binary images and grayscale images whose light transfer function is not known.

Other operators and tools

 Morphological Gradients

 Top-hat transform

 Watershed (algorithm)

By combining these operators one can obtain algorithms for many image processing tasks, such

as feature detection, image segmentation, image sharpening, image filtering, and classification.
Mathematical morphology on complete lattices

Complete lattices are partially ordered sets, where every subset has an infimum and a supremum.

In particular, it contains a least element and a greatest element (also denoted "universe").

Adjunctions (Dilation and Erosion)

Let be a complete lattice, with infimum and minimum symbolized by and ,

respectively. Its universe and least element are symbolized by U and , respectively. Moreover,

let {Xi} be a collection of elements from L.

A dilation is any operator that distributes over the supremum, and preserves the

least element. I.e.:

 ,

 .

An erosion is any operator that distributes over the infimum, and preserves the

universe. I.e.:

 ,

 .
Dilations and erosions form Galois connections. That is, for all dilation δ there is one and only

one erosion that satisfies

for all .

Similarly, for all erosion there is one and only one dilation satisfying the above connection.

Furthermore, if two operators satisfy the connection, then δ must be a dilation, and an erosion.

Pairs of erosions and dilations satisfying the above connection are called "adjunctions", and the

erosion is said to be the adjoint erosion of the dilation, and vice-versa.

Opening and Closing

For all adjunction , the morphological opening and morphological closing

are defined as follows:

, and

The morphological opening and closing are particular cases of algebraic opening (or simply

opening) and algebraic closing (or simply closing). Algebraic openings are operators in L that

are idempotent, increasing, and anti-extensive. Algebraic closings are operators in L that are

idempotent, increasing, and extensive.

Particular cases

Binary morphology is a particular case of lattice morphology, where L is the power set of E

(Euclidean space or grid), that is, L is the set of all subsets of E, and is the set inclusion. In this

case, the infimum is set intersection, and the supremum is set union.

Similarly, grayscale morphology is another particular case, where L is the set of functions

mapping E into , and , , and , are the point-wise order, supremum, and

infimum, respectively. That is, is f and g are functions in L, then if and only if

; the infimum is given by ; and

the supremum is given by .

Morphology-based Operations

In Section 1 we defined an image as an (amplitude) function of two, real (coordinate) variables

a(x,y) or two, discrete variables a[m,n]. An alternative definition of an image can be based on the

notion that an image consists of a set (or collection) of either continuous or discrete coordinates.

In a sense the set corresponds to the points or pixels that belong to the objects in the image. This

is illustrated in Figure 35 which contains two objects or sets A and B. Note that the coordinate

system is required. For the moment we will consider the pixel values to be binary as discussed in

Section 2.1 and 9.2.1. Further we shall restrict our discussion to discrete space (Z2). More

general discussions can be found in .

 Figure : A binary image containing two object sets A and B.

The object A consists of those pixels a that share some common property:

Object -

As an example, object B in Figure 35 consists of {[0,0], [1,0], [0,1]}.

The background of A is given by Ac (the complement of A) which is defined as those elements

that are not in A:

Background -

In Figure 3 we introduced the concept of neighborhood connectivity. We now observe that if an

object A is defined on the basis of C-connectivity (C=4, 6, or 8) then the background Ac has a

connectivity given by 12 - C. The necessity for this is illustrated for the Cartesian grid in Figure

36.
Figure 36: A binary image requiring careful definition of object and background connectivity.

Fundamental definitions

The fundamental operations associated with an object are the standard set operations union,

intersection, and complement { , , c} plus translation:

* Translation - Given a vector x and a set A, the translation, A + x, is defined as:

Note that, since we are dealing with a digital image composed of pixels at integer coordinate

positions (Z2), this implies restrictions on the allowable translation vectors x.

The basic Minkowski set operations--addition and subtraction--can now be defined. First we note

that the individual elements that comprise B are not only pixels but also vectors as they have a

clear coordinate position with respect to [0,0]. Given two sets A and B:

Minkowski addition -

Minkowski subtraction -
Dilation and Erosion

From these two Minkowski operations we define the fundamental mathematical morphology

operations dilation and erosion:

Dilation -

Erosion -

where . These two operations are illustrated in Figure 37 for the objects defined

in Figure 35.

(a) Dilation D(A,B) (b) Erosion E(A,B)

Figure 37: A binary image containing two object sets A and B. The three pixels in B are "color-

coded" as is their effect in the result.

While either set A or B can be thought of as an "image", A is usually considered as the image

and B is called a structuring element. The structuring element is to mathematical morphology

what the convolution kernel is to linear filter theory.

Dilation, in general, causes objects to dilate or grow in size; erosion causes objects to shrink. The

amount and the way that they grow or shrink depend upon the choice of the structuring element.
Dilating or eroding without specifying the structural element makes no more sense than trying to

lowpass filter an image without specifying the filter. The two most common structuring elements

(given a Cartesian grid) are the 4-connected and 8-connected sets, N4 and N8. They are illustrated

in Figure 38.

(a) N4 (b) N8

Figure 38: The standard structuring elements N4 and N8.

Dilation and erosion have the following properties:

Commutative -

Non-Commutative -

Associative -

Translation Invariance -

Duality -

With A as an object and Ac as the background, eq. says that the dilation of an object is equivalent

to the erosion of the background. Likewise, the erosion of the object is equivalent to the dilation

of the background.
Except for special cases:

Non-Inverses -

Erosion has the following translation property:

Translation Invariance -

Dilation and erosion have the following important properties. For any arbitrary structuring

element B and two image objects A1 and A2 such that A1 A2 (A1 is a proper subset of A2):

Increasing in A -

For two structuring elements B1 and B2 such that B1 B2:

Decreasing in B -

The decomposition theorems below make it possible to find efficient implementations for

morphological filters.

Dilation -

Erosion -

Erosion -

Multiple Dilations -
An important decomposition theorem is due to Vincent . First, we require some definitions. A

convex set (in R2) is one for which the straight line joining any two points in the set consists of

points that are also in the set. Care must obviously be taken when applying this definition to

discrete pixels as the concept of a "straight line" must be interpreted appropriately in Z2. A set is

bounded if each of its elements has a finite magnitude, in this case distance to the origin of the

coordinate system. A set is symmetric if B = -B. The sets N4 and N8 in Figure 38 are examples of

convex, bounded, symmetric sets.

Vincent's theorem, when applied to an image consisting of discrete pixels, states that for a

bounded, symmetric structuring element B that contains no holes and contains its own center,

where A is the contour of the object. That is, A is the set of pixels that have a background

pixel as a neighbor. The implication of this theorem is that it is not necessary to process all the

pixels in an object in order to compute a dilation or (using eq. ) an erosion. We only have to

process the boundary pixels. This also holds for all operations that can be derived from dilations

and erosions. The processing of boundary pixels instead of object pixels means that, except for

pathological images, computational complexity can be reduced from O(N2) to O(N) for an N x N

image. A number of "fast" algorithms can be found in the literature that are based on this result .

The simplest dilation and erosion algorithms are frequently described as follows.

* Dilation - Take each binary object pixel (with value "1") and set all background pixels (with

value "0") that are C-connected to that object pixel to the value "1".
* Erosion - Take each binary object pixel (with value "1") that is C-connected to a background

pixel and set the object pixel value to "0".

Comparison of these two procedures to eq. where B = NC=4 or NC=8 shows that they are

equivalent to the formal definitions for dilation and erosion. The procedure is illustrated for

dilation in Figure 39.

(a) B = N4 (b) B= N8

Figure 39: Illustration of dilation. Original object pixels are in gray; pixels added through

dilation are in black.

Boolean Convolution

An arbitrary binary image object (or structuring element) A can be represented as:

where and * are the Boolean operations OR and AND as defined in eqs. (81) and (82), a[j,k] is

a characteristic function that takes on the Boolean values "1" and "0" as follows:
and d[m,n] is a Boolean version of the Dirac delta function that takes on the Boolean values "1"

and "0" as follows:

Dilation for binary images can therefore be written as:

which, because Boolean OR and AND are commutative, can also be written as

Using De Morgan's theorem:

on eq. together with eq. , erosion can be written as:

Thus, dilation and erosion on binary images can be viewed as a form of convolution over a

Boolean algebra.

In Section 9.3.2 we saw that, when convolution is employed, an appropriate choice of the

boundary conditions for an image is essential. Dilation and erosion--being a Boolean

convolution--are no exception. The two most common choices are that either everything outside

the binary image is "0" or everything outside the binary image is "1".

Opening and Closing

We can combine dilation and erosion to build two important higher order operations:

Opening -

Closing -

The opening and closing have the following properties:

Duality -

Translation -

For the opening with structuring element B and images A, A1, and A2, where A1 is a subimage of

A2 (A1 A2):

Antiextensivity -

Increasing monotonicity -

Idempotence -

For the closing with structuring element B and images A, A1, and A2, where A1 is a subimage of

A2 (A1 A2):
Extensivity -

Increasing monotonicity -

Idempotence -

The two properties given by eqs. and are so important to mathematical morphology that they can

be considered as the reason for defining erosion with -B instead of B in eq. .

itandMiss operation

The hit-or-miss operator was defined by Serra but we shall refer to it as the hit-and-miss operator

and define it as follows. Given an image A and two structuring elements B1 and B2, the set

definition and Boolean definition are:

it-and-Miss -

where B1 and B2 are bounded, disjoint structuring elements. (Note the use of the notation from

eq. (81).) Two sets are disjoint if B1 B2 = , the empty set. In an important sense the hit-and-

miss operator is the morphological equivalent of template matching, a well-known technique for

matching patterns based upon cross-correlation. ere, we have a template B1 for the object and a

template B2 for the background.

Summary of the basic operations

The results of the application of these basic operations on a test image are illustrated below. In

Figure 40 the various structuring elements used in the processing are defined. The value "-"

indicates a "don't care". All three structuring elements are symmetric.

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 40: Structuring elements B, B1, and B2 that are 3 x 3 and symmetric.

The results of processing are shown in Figure 41 where the binary value "1" is shown in black

and the value "0" in white.

a) Image A b) Dilation with 2B c) Erosion with 2B

d) Opening with 2B e) Closing with 2B f) it-and-Miss with B1 and B2

Figure 41: Examples of various mathematical morphology operations.

The opening operation can separate objects that are connected in a binary image. The closing

operation can fill in small holes. Both operations generate a certain amount of smoothing on an

object contour given a "smooth" structuring element. The opening smoothes from the inside of

the object contour and the closing smoothes from the outside of the object contour. The hit-and-

miss example has found the 4-connected contour pixels. An alternative method to find the

contour is simply to use the relation:

4-connected contour -

or

8-connected contour -

Skeleton

The informal definition of a skeleton is a line representation of an object that is:

i) one-pixel thick,

ii) through the "middle" of the object, and,

iii) preserves the topology of the object.

These are not always realizable. Figure 42 shows why this is the case.
 (a) (b)

Figure 42: Counterexamples to the three requirements.

In the first example, Figure 42a, it is not possible to generate a line that is one pixel thick and in

the center of an object while generating a path that reflects the simplicity of the object. In Figure

42b it is not possible to remove a pixel from the 8-connected object and simultaneously preserve

the topology--the notion of connectedness--of the object. Nevertheless, there are a variety of

techniques that attempt to achieve this goal and to produce a skeleton.

A basic formulation is based on the work of Lantuéjoul . The skeleton subset Sk(A) is defined as:

Skeleton subsets -

where K is the largest value of k before the set Sk(A) becomes empty. (From eq. ,

). The structuring element B is chosen (in Z2) to approximate a circular

disc, that is, convex, bounded and symmetric. The skeleton is then the union of the skeleton

subsets:

Skeleton -

An elegant side effect of this formulation is that the original object can be reconstructed given

knowledge of the skeleton subsets Sk(A), the structuring element B, and K:

Reconstruction -

This formulation for the skeleton, however, does not preserve the topology, a requirement

described in eq. .

An alternative point-of-view is to implement a thinning, an erosion that reduces the thickness of

an object without permitting it to vanish. A general thinning algorithm is based on the hit-and-

miss operation:

Thinning -

Depending on the choice of B1 and B2, a large variety of thinning algorithms--and through

repeated application skeletonizing algorithms--can be implemented.

A quite practical implementation can be described in another way. If we restrict ourselves to a 3

x 3 neighborhood, similar to the structuring element B = N8 in Figure 40a, then we can view the

thinning operation as a window that repeatedly scans over the (binary) image and sets the center

pixel to "0" under certain conditions. The center pixel is not changed to "0" if and only if:

i) an isolated pixel is found (e.g. Figure 43a),

ii) removing a pixel would change the connectivity (e.g. Figure 43b),

iii) removing a pixel would shorten a line (e.g. Figure 43c).

As pixels are (potentially) removed in each iteration, the process is called a conditional erosion.

Three test cases of eq. are illustrated in Figure 43. In general all possible rotations and variations
have to be checked. As there are only 512 possible combinations for a 3 x 3 window on a binary

image, this can be done easily with the use of a lookup table.

(a) Isolated pixel (b) Connectivity pixel (c) End pixel

Figure 43: Test conditions for conditional erosion of the center pixel.

If only condition (i) is used then each object will be reduced to a single pixel. This is useful if we

wish to count the number of objects in an image. If only condition (ii) is used then holes in the

objects will be found. If conditions (i + ii) are used each object will be reduced to either a single

pixel if it does not contain a hole or to closed rings if it does contain holes. If conditions (i + ii +

iii) are used then the "complete skeleton" will be generated as an approximation to eq. .

Illustrations of these various possibilities are given in Figure 44a,b.

Propagation

It is convenient to be able to reconstruct an image that has "survived" several erosions or to fill

an object that is defined, for example, by a boundary. The formal mechanism for this has several

names including region-filling, reconstruction, and propagation. The formal definition is given

by the following algorithm. We start with a seed image S(0), a mask image A, and a structuring

element B. We then use dilations of S with structuring element B and masked by A in an

iterative procedure as follows:

Iteration k -

With each iteration the seed image grows (through dilation) but within the set (object) defined by

A; S propagates to fill A. The most common choices for B are N4 or N8. Several remarks are
central to the use of propagation. First, in a straightforward implementation, as suggested by eq. ,

the computational costs are extremely high. Each iteration requires O(N2) operations for an N x

N image and with the required number of iterations this can lead to a complexity of O(N3).

Fortunately, a recursive implementation of the algorithm exists in which one or two passes

through the image are usually sufficient, meaning a complexity of O(N2). Second, although we

have not paid much attention to the issue of object/background connectivity until now (see

Figure 36), it is essential that the connectivity implied by B be matched to the connectivity

associated with the boundary definition of A (see eqs. and ). Finally, as mentioned earlier, it is

important to make the correct choice ("0" or "1") for the boundary condition of the image. The

choice depends upon the application.

Summary of skeleton and propagation

The application of these two operations on a test image is illustrated in Figure 44. In Figure

44a,b the skeleton operation is shown with the endpixel condition (eq. i+ii+iii) and without the

end pixel condition (eq. i+ii). The propagation operation is illustrated in Figure 44c. The original

image, shown in light gray, was eroded by E(A,6N8) to produce the seed image shown in black.

The original was then used as the mask image to produce the final result. The border value in

both images was "0".

Several techniques based upon the use of skeleton and propagation operations in combination

with other mathematical morphology operations will be given in Section 10.3.3.

Original = light gray Mask = light gray

Skeleton = black Seed = black

a) Skeleton with end pixels b) Skeleton without end pixels c) Propagation with N8

Condition eq. i+ii+iii Condition eq. i+ii

Figure 44: Examples of skeleton and propagation.

Gray-value morphological processing

The techniques of morphological filtering can be extended to gray-level images. To simplify

matters we will restrict our presentation to structuring elements, B, that comprise a finite number

of pixels and are convex and bounded. Now, however, the structuring element has gray values

associated with every coordinate position as does the image A.

* Gray-level dilation, DG(*), is given by:

Dilation -

For a given output coordinate [m,n], the structuring element is summed with a shifted version of

the image and the maximum encountered over all shifts within the J x K domain of B is used as

the result. Should the shifting require values of the image A that are outside the M x N domain of

A, then a decision must be made as to which model for image extension, as described in Section

9.3.2, should be used.

* Gray-level erosion, EG(*), is given by:

Erosion -

The duality between gray-level erosion and gray-level dilation--the gray-level counterpart of eq.

--is somewhat more complex than in the binary case:

Duality -

where " " means that a[j,k] -> -a[-j,-k].

The definitions of higher order operations such as gray-level opening and gray-level closing are:

Opening -

Closing -
The important properties that were discussed earlier such as idempotence, translation invariance,

increasing in A, and so forth are also applicable to gray level morphological processing. The

details can be found in Giardina and Dougherty .

In many situations the seeming complexity of gray level morphological processing is

significantly reduced through the use of symmetric structuring elements where b[j,k] = b[-j,-k].

The most common of these is based on the use of B = constant = 0. For this important case and

using again the domain [j,k] B, the definitions above reduce to:

Dilation -

Erosion -

Opening -

Closing -

The remarkable conclusion is that the maximum filter and the minimum filter, introduced in

Section 9.4.2, are gray-level dilation and gray-level erosion for the specific structuring element

given by the shape of the filter window with the gray value "0" inside the window. Examples of

these operations on a simple one-dimensional signal are shown in Figure 45.

a) Effect of 15 x 1 dilation and erosion b) Effect of 15 x 1 opening and closing

Figure 45: Morphological filtering of gray-level data.

For a rectangular window, J x K, the two-dimensional maximum or minimum filter is separable

into two, one-dimensional windows. Further, a one-dimensional maximum or minimum filter can

be written in incremental form. (See Section 9.3.2.) This means that gray-level dilations and

erosions have a computational complexity per pixel that is O(constant), that is, independent of J

and K. (See also Table 13.)

The operations defined above can be used to produce morphological algorithms for smoothing,

gradient determination and a version of the Laplacian. All are constructed from the primitives for

gray-level dilation and gray-level erosion and in all cases the maximum and minimum filters are

taken over the domain .

Morphological smoothing

This algorithm is based on the observation that a gray-level opening smoothes a gray-value

image from above the brightness surface given by the function a[m,n] and the gray-level closing

smoothes from below. We use a structuring element B based on eqs. and .

Note that we have suppressed the notation for the structuring element B under the max and min

operations to keep the notation simple. Its use, however, is understood.

Morphological gradient

For linear filters the gradient filter yields a vector representation (eq. (103)) with a magnitude

(eq. (104)) and direction (eq. (105)). The version presented here generates a morphological

estimate of the gradient magnitude:

Morphological Laplacian

The morphologically-based Laplacian filter is defined by:

Summary of morphological filters

The effect of these filters is illustrated in Figure 46. All images were processed with a 3 x 3

structuring element as described in eqs. through . Figure 46e was contrast stretched for display

purposes using eq. (78) and the parameters 1% and 99%. Figures 46c,d,e should be compared to

Figures 30, 32, and 33.

a) Dilation b) Erosion c) Smoothing

d) Gradient e) Laplacian

Figure 46: Examples of gray-level morphological filters.

Proposed Method;

IMAGE PREPROCESSING

During input image preprocessing stage, 4 linear filters were employed, as shown in Figure
Fig.2. pre-processing system applied Sobel operators used to estimate the first derivative of Input

image angiogram in horizontal and vertical directions. HP h and M h are the kernels of a high-

pass and low-pass filters. Sobel operators DH h and DV h are kernels with 3x3 elements given

by

As a high-pass filter, we adopted also a 3x3 kernel, given by:

Filter M h in turn, was chosen in such a way as to guarantee that the gray level in each pixel of

the output image is the arithmetic mean of the gray levels in a 5x5 neighborhood of the same

pixel in the input image. g h is Gaussian filter and described by

Given the kernels associated with each filter, the filtered images may be computed through a bi

dimensional convolution operation:

FUZZY SETS AND FUZZY MEMBERSHIP FUNCTIONS DEFINITIONS:

The system implementation was carried out considering that the input image I and the output

image obtained after defuzzification are both 8-bit quantized; this way their gray levels are

always between 0 and 255. These values define the working interval of the output variable and

the input variable G (the other input variables are not guaranteed to be less than 255). Besides,

three fuzzy sets were created to represent each variable's intensities; these sets were associated to

the linguistic variable "low", "medium" and "high". The adopted membership functions for the

fuzzy sets associated to the input G and to the output were Triangular functions with means 0,
127.5 and 255, as shown in Fig.3(a). For the sets associated to the other input images, Triangular

functions were also adopted for the linguistic variables "low" and "medium", but for the variable

"high" a sigmoid function was chosen (Fig.3(b)), since in this case we can not guarantee

that the input values will be restricted to the interval [0,255].

FUZZY LOGICAL OPERATIONS AND DEFUZZIFICATION

METHOD DEFINITIONS

The functions adopted to implement the "and" (norm-T) and "or" (norm-S) operations were the

minimum and maximum functions, respectively. The Mamdani method was chosen as the

defuzzification procedure, which means that the fuzzy sets obtained by applying each inference

rule to the input data were joined through the add function; the output of the system was then

computed as the centroid of the resulting membership function [12, pages 148-161].

3.2 INFERENCE RULES DEFINITIONS

The fuzzy inference rules were defined in such a way that the FIS system output ("Edges") is

high only for those pixels belonging to edges in the input image. A robustness to contrast and

lighting variations were also in mind when these rules were established. The first 3 rules were

defined to represent the general notion that in pixels belonging to an edge there is a high

variation of gray level in the vertical or horizontal directions: To guarantee that edges in regions

of relatively low contrast can be detected, the two following rules were established to favor

medium variations of the gray level in a specific direction in regions of low frequency of the

input image (HP "low"): Rules 6 and 7 were chosen in such a way as to avoid including in the

output image pixels belonging to regions of the input were the mean gray level is lower. These

regions are proportionally more affected by noise, supposed it is uniformly distributed over the

whole image. The goal here is to design a system which makes it easier to include edges in low

contrast regions, but which does not favor false edges by effect of noise. Rules 8 to 11 were
established to avoid forming double edges in the output image ( they tend to appear due to

shadows in the natural images). Considering that high variations in gray level in horizontal

direction correspond to vertical edges, we conclude that high values of DH(i, j) and DH(i, j 1) do

not imply edges pixels in (i, j) and (i, j 1) , simultaneously. Analogously, high values of DV(i, j)

and DV(i 1, j) do not correspond to edge pixels in (i, j) and (i 1, j) . Finally, rule 12 was defined

to avoid including isolated pixels in the output image, favoring only continuous lines. It

also avoids including points by effect of noise, since this tends to generate isolated pixels in the

image which represents the input's edges. The threshold value to be applied may be estimated

given the root mean square value (RMS) associated to the input image [11, page 77-51].

The outputs of fuzzy interference system generally determined the edge of vessels. On account

of existing of noise in that outputs we in following use mathematical morphology system

for better noise cancelling and edge detection.

MORPHOLOGY FILTERS

Mathematical morphology is a new mathematical theory which can be used to process and

analyze the images [13-14]. It provides an alternative approach to image processing based on

shape concept stemmed from set theory [15], not on traditional mathematical modeling and

analysis. In the mathematical morphology theory, images are treated as sets, and morphology

transformations which derived from Minkowski addition and subtraction are defined to extract

features in images. As the performance of classic edge detectors degrades with noise,

morphology edge detector has been studied [16]. The basic mathematical morphology operators

are dilation and erosion and the other morphology operators are the synthesization of the two
basic operations. In the following, we introduce some basic mathematical morphological

operators of grey-scale images.

Erosion is a transformation of shrinking, which decreases the grey-scale value of the image,

while dilation is a transformation of expanding, which increases the grey-scale value of the

image. But both of themare sensitive to the image edge whose grey-scale value changes

obviously. Erosion filters the inner image while dilation filters the outer image. Opening is

erosion followed by dilation and closing is dilation followed by erosion. Opening generally

smoothes the contour of an image, breaks narrow gaps. As opposed to opening, closing tends to

fuse narrow breaks, eliminates small holes, and fills gaps in the contours. Therefore,

morphological operation is used to detect image edge, and at same time, denoise the image.
In medical image edge detection, we must select appropriate structuring element by texture

features of the image, and the size, shape and direction of structuring element must been

considered roundly. Usually, except for special demand, we select structuring element by 3x3

square that in this paper applied:

In this paper, a novel mathematical morphology edge detection algorithm is proposed. Opening-

closing operation is firstly used as preprocessing to filter noise. Then smooth the image by first

closing and then dilation. The perfect image edge will be got by performing the difference

between the processed image by above process and the image before dilation. In the following

the novel algorithm proposed as:

CONCLUSION

In this paper, a novel fuzzy inference system and mathematical morphologic algorithms is

proposed to segmentation of blood vessels. The results show that the algorithm is more efficient

for segmentation of angiogram images and noise cancelling than other methods such as canny

method.