The Image Foresting Transform: Theory, Algorithms and Applications

The image foresting transform (IFT) is a graph-based approach to the design of image processing operators based on connectivity. It naturally leads to correct and efficient implementations, and to a better understanding of how different operators relate to each other. We give here a precise definition of the IFT, and a procedure to compute it---a generalization of Dijkstra's algorithm---with a proof of correctness. We also discuss implementation issues and illustrate the use of the IFT in a few applications.

2003