A directional morphological operation and its application to immunological image processing

A directional morphological operation can be performed by utilizing a rotational structuring element with a directional information, and its associated processing methods for overlapping and enclosing are proposed. As an example of the overlapping method, derived from the directional morphological operation, a distribution of high/low atmospheric pressures is obtained from the wind direction of a weather report. The enclosing method obtained from the directional morphological operation is applied to a shape recognition system utilizing multi-ultrasonic sensors. This method is also applied to immunological image processing which utilizes the function of self or non-self discrimination in the immune system of a living body. From simulation and experimental results, it has been shown that these methods are effective for extracting mutual relationships among data including directional information, and that object categories are discriminated by applying directional morphological operation for immunological discrimination