Development and simulation of soft morphological operators for a field programmable gate array

In image processing applications, soft mathematical morphology (MM) can be employed for both binary and grayscale systems and is derived from set theory. Soft MM techniques have improved behavior over standard morphological operations in noisy environments, as they can preserve small details within an image. This makes them suitable for use in image processing applications on portable field programmable gate arrays for tasks such as robotics and security. We explain how the systems were developed using Altera's DSP Builder in order to provide optimized code for the many different devices currently on the market. Also included is how the circuits can be inserted and combined with previously developed work in order to increase their functionality. The testing procedures involved loading different images into these systems and analyzing the outputs against MATLAB-generated validation images. A set of soft morphological operations are described, which can then be applied to various tasks and easily modified in size via altering the line buffer settings inside the system to accommodate a range of image attributes ranging from image sizes such as 320 × 240 pixels for basic webcam imagery up to high quality 4000 × 4000 pixel images for military applications. Publisher statement: Tickle, A. , Harvey, P.K. , Smith, J.S. and Wu, Q.H. "Development and simulation of soft morphological operators for a field programmable gate array". Journal of Electronic Imaging, G. Sharma (Journal Editor) volume 22 (2): 23034 (2013). Copyright 2013 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited.