Optoelectronic parallel watershed implementation for segmentation of magnetic resonance brain images

An optoelectronic implementation for the morphological watershed transform is proposed. Fiber-optic programmable logic arrays are used in the implementation because of their high fan factors at high clock speeds. Image segmentation is one of the main applications of the watershed transform. Based on the optoelectronic implementation, an algorithm for the segmentation of axial magnetic resonance (MR) head images to extract information on brain matter is presented. Simulation results for the different steps of the segmentation process are presented.