| iTool User's Guide: Common Operations |

## Morphing

Mathematical morphology is a method of processing digital images on the basis of shape. Morphing is available when working with images, surfaces, and contours. Six morphing options are available for use in iTools: dilate, erode, morph open, morph close, morph gradient, and morph tophat.

Table 7-1: Morph Menu Options

Table 7-1: Morph Menu Options
Morphing Option | Description
--- | ---
Dilate | Dilate is commonly known as "fill", "expand", or "grow." It can be used to fill "holes" of a size equal to or smaller than the structuring element.
Erode | Erode does to the background what dilation does to the foreground. Given an image and a structuring element, erode can be used to remove islands smaller than the structuring element.
Morph open | Morph open is simply an erosion operation followed by a dilation operation. Applying morph open more than once produces no further effect.
Morph close | Morph close is simply a dilation operation followed by an erosion operation. Applying morph close more than once produces no further effect.
Morph gradient | Morph gradient is the subtraction of an eroded version of the original image from a dilated version of the original image.
Morph tophat | Morph tophat is implemented by first applying the opening operator to the original image, then subtracting the result from the original image. Applying tophat shows the bright peaks within the image.

To apply a morphology option:

1. Select the object to be morphed.

2. Select Operations Morph <option>.

IDL Online Help (March 01, 2006)