eroding several layers of an array

Question

I'm having trouble understanding scipy's binary_erosion function.

from scipy.ndimage import binary_erosion
a = np.zeros([12,12])
a[1:11,1:11]=1
binary_erosion(a).astype(int)

this removes the outermost edges, but what if I want to remove the second layer as well? I know I should probably use the structure option, but I don't understand how it works and could not find enough examples that explain it properly

Answer 1

Use the iterations option to have it repeat n times (remove additional layers): [source]

iterations : int, optional
The erosion is repeated iterations times (one, by default). If iterations is less than 1, the erosion is repeated until the result does not change anymore.

So yours:

array([[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]])

And with the iterations option set to 2, you'll notice an additional layer has been reduced.

>>> binary_erosion(a, iterations=2).astype(int)
array([[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]])

---

Since you asked in a comment, the structure can be used to determine how much to remove for each iteration. There is a good breakdown here of what that means.

This is the structuring element used for erosion. Meaning that if this were a 3x3 square, as it moved around the edge, the pixels that are completely covered will get removed, and the ones that are only partially covered will stay.

Also take a look at this medium post which has hand drawn a bunch of examples for how this works and breaks it down even further.