Feature Extraction by Golay Hexagonal Pattern Transforms

Golay hexagonal pattern transforms are position independent local operators for use in transforming or altering binary images. The hexagonal tessellation is preferred because it removes the connectivity ambiguity present in the square or checkerboard tessellation. Golay transforms also may be applied to multilevel or "gray" images by encoding such images as a registered stack of binary image planes. The general Golay transform creates a new binary image (the output image) from as many as three stacked input images. Simpler Golay transforms merely alter the binary pattern contained in a single image plane, i.e., the same plane acts as both input and output. Because it is slow and cumbersome to perform Golay transforms using a general-purpose computer, fast special-purpose computers have been built for this purpose which may be programmed in a new image processing language called Glol (Golay logic language). It has been found, using both synthetic images as well as images taken from the real world, that Golay transforms are useful in feature enhancement and extraction. Several illustrative examples are provided.