The morphological opening (Serra, 1982)
  of a set \(W\) by a distance \(r > 0\)
  is the subset of points in \(W\) that can be 
  separated from the boundary of \(W\) by a circle of radius \(r\).
  That is, a point \(x\) belongs to the opening 
  if it is possible to draw a circle of radius \(r\) (not necessarily
  centred on \(x\)) that has \(x\) on the inside
  and the boundary of \(W\) on the outside.
  The opened set is a subset of W.
For a small radius \(r\), the opening operation
  has the effect of smoothing out irregularities in the boundary of
  \(W\). For larger radii, the opening operation removes promontories
  in the boundary. For very large radii, the opened set is empty.
The algorithm applies erosion followed by
  dilation.