The morphological opening (Serra, 1982)
of a set \(W\) by a distance \(r > 0\)
is the subset of points in \(W\) that can be
separated from the boundary of \(W\) by a circle of radius \(r\).
That is, a point \(x\) belongs to the opening
if it is possible to draw a circle of radius \(r\) (not necessarily
centred on \(x\)) that has \(x\) on the inside
and the boundary of \(W\) on the outside.
The opened set is a subset of W
.
For a small radius \(r\), the opening operation
has the effect of smoothing out irregularities in the boundary of
\(W\). For larger radii, the opening operation removes promontories
in the boundary. For very large radii, the opened set is empty.
The algorithm applies erosion
followed by
dilation
.