MORPHOLOGY PROCESSING APPARATUS AND METHOD

The present invention provides a novel system and method that permits a "mask" to be directly incorporated into an image during image processing. This is accomplished by processing binary images or image data which are encoded using two bits rather than the usual one. The second bit is defined to be a "mask enable", which directs a processor to pass the original data through to the output image regardless of the processing result for that pixel. The present invention also provides a means of automatically providing background data to the processor for pixels outside the original image so that the result image is always the same size as the original image. For binary images, the background may be defined to have a value of "0" or "1", and this value is provided to the processing engine in place of all of the pixels which lie outside the original image. For gray-scale images, the minimum or maximum possible value is provided to the processing engine in place of all of the pixels which lie outside of the original image, effectively eliminating these values from consideration when the minimum or maximum of the neighborhood pixels is computed. The determination of whether a pixel is outside of the original image is implemented using the framing signals provided by a data flow controller along with the image data.