ABSTRACT
Once objects have been segmented from the background (Chapter 15), the geometrical form of them, the shape, can be processed and analyzed.
The tasks related to shape analysis are summarized in task list 12. In the first place, it might be useful and of interest to correct the segmented shape (Section 16.4.1). This task can be performed by a class of neighborhood operators on binary images, known as morphological operators (Section 16.3.1). These operators can also extract object boundaries, sort objects according to their size, etc. In short, they offer a versatile tool to manipulate the shape of objects. They play the same important role for object shape extraction and manipulation as convolution operators do for feature extraction.
