Pruning (morphology)
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The pruning algorithm is a technique used for digital image processing based on mathematical morphology. It is used as a complement to the skeleton and thinning algorithms to remove unwanted parasitic components.
The process in itself will remove all branches shorter than a given number of points, for character recognition for example on skeletons of the letters. The pruning algorithm starts at the end points and recursively removes a given number N of points from each found branch. After this step it will apply dilatation on the new end points with a (2N+1)(2N+1) structuring element of 1’s and will intersect the result with the original image. If suppose a parasitic branch is shorter than four points and we try to remove all the branches that short, after the fourth step the branch would be removed and no end point would be remaining there. A normal branch would be four points shorter also but after the second step it would go back to its original size.
