distMask

distMask is a term that can refer to several related concepts within digital image processing and computer vision, often relating to distance transform masks. A distance transform itself is an operation that assigns to each pixel in a binary image the distance to the nearest zero pixel. A distMask, in this context, can be understood as a representation or a mask derived from this distance transform.

One common interpretation is that a distMask is a binary image where pixels are marked based on a certain distance threshold from the object's boundary. Pixels within this threshold might be considered "interior" or "safe" regions, while those outside are marked differently. This is useful for tasks such as object segmentation, shape analysis, or the generation of erosion/dilation masks.

Another use of the term could be as a generic placeholder for a mask that defines a distance-related property of an image. For instance, it could represent a mask where pixel values indicate how far they are from a specific feature or region of interest, not necessarily just the nearest zero pixel. The precise definition and application of a distMask would depend on the specific algorithm or library being used. Its primary purpose is to encode spatial distance information in a mask format for further processing.