MACHINE VISION SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR MORPHOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION OF AN IMAGE WITH NON-UNIFORM OFFSETS

The invention provides machine vision systems and methods for morphological transformation of a source image, e.g., with non-uniform offsets. According to these, pixels from selected "neighborhoods," or regions, of the source image are rearranged, or unfolded, into respective columns of an intermediate image. For each column in the intermediate image, the method identifies a pixel intensity value of selected rank. Once the pixel intensity value of selected rank is identified for each column, it is retained in a transformation image, e.g., at a location corresponding to center of the respective neighborhood. The foregoing steps are repeated, e.g., along strips or bands, for each neighborhood in the source image.