how can I connect two or more connected components in binary image?

after I get connected components for binary image, I need to merge two or more connected components to be one CC

[Matt J]

How do you get them? In what form do you have them now?

[abdelrahim hashem]

I get many CCs, some of them represent characters. I need to combine these CCs represent characters to extract text from image. I think the form should be a new CC.

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Try imclose() to merge nearby regions into the same region.

[abdelrahim hashem]

Can you give me more explanation to use imclose()?

[Image Analyst]

It basically dilates the binary blobs by one or more layers, making it "grow" and possibly connect to other blobs. This will also make the blob boundaries smoother. Then it erodes that by the same amount to get it back to the same size. The boundary will be smoother than the original and any connections made to adjacent blobs will still be there. So basically it will merge blobs and smooth the outlines.