A LOWER BOUND FOR STRUCTURING ELEMENT DECOMPOSITIONS

This correspondence describes a theoretical lower bound on the number of points required in the decomposition of morphological structuring elements. It is shown that the decomposition of an arbitrary N-point structuring element will require at least [GRAPHICS] points. Using this lower bound it is possible to find the optimal decompositions (in terms of the minimum number of unions or the minimum number of points) for all one-dimensional connected line segments. L-dimensional rectangles may be decomposed by optimally decomposing the L one-dimensional line segments that describe the rectangle.