After significant trial and error on morphological operations the following results were achieved:

The Program:

#include

#include

#include

#include

#include

IplImage *img=0; //the pointer is assigned value zero;

//thus it points to nothing untill something is loaded

IplImage *img2=0;

int main(void){

img=cvLoadImage("sg (25).jpg");

if(img==0){

fprintf(stderr,"Cannot load file.");

getchar();

return(1);

}

int i,j,height,width, step, channels;

int temp;

height=img->height;

width=img->width;

channels=img->nChannels;

step=img->widthStep;

unsigned char *data=(unsigned char *)img->imageData; //Since it's an IPL_DEPTH_8U image

for(i=0;i

for(j=0;j

temp=2*data[i*step+j*channels+2]

-data[i*step+j*channels+1]

-data[i*step+j*channels+0]; //temp=2*red - sum of blue and green

//thus the current range of temp is -510 to 510

temp=temp/4; //this reduces the range to -127 to 127

temp=temp+127; //this shifts the range to 0 to 254

data[i*step+j*channels+0]=temp;

data[i*step+j*channels+1]=temp;

data[i*step+j*channels+2]=temp;

}

}

//once the image is rendered into gray scale we don't modify img

//hence img2 - the dummy - is used

img2=cvCreateImage(cvGetSize(img),img->depth,img->nChannels);

unsigned char *data2=(unsigned char *)img2->imageData;

cvErode(img,img2,NULL,5);

cvDilate(img2,img2,NULL,5);

cvThreshold(img2,img2,100,255,CV_THRESH_BINARY);

cvNamedWindow("image",CV_WINDOW_AUTOSIZE);

cvShowImage("image",img2);

cvSaveImage("obj.jpg",img2);

cvWaitKey(0);

cvDestroyWindow("image");

cvReleaseImage(&img);

}