Remove unconnected lines from Canny Edge Detection

Hi Guys,

I have run a canny edge detection on an image and it has worked fairly well. After some processing I have been able to use the canny edge detector to find the edges. I then connect the edges using image dilate, and take the skeleton of the dilated lines. The problem is I am left with this unconnected lines. I have been searching for a while and cant seem to find a way to remove them.

I feel as though this should be quite simple but I am struggling to figure it out.

I have tried selecting each individual segment and dilating and eroding it, but I cant seem to get this to work.

Thanks in advance,

[Samuel Leeney]

To anyone who comes across this problem in the future, the solution was as follows:

1. Give each segment a value using bwlabel
2. Index through each segment and imdilate them imerode with a fairly large strel.

This removed the 'tails' without affecting the segments by a noticible amount.

For example:

Note my method is quite slow, I am yet to optimise it.

SE = strel('disk',25); 
for n = 1:max(ul) %checks through each segment
    for k = 1:(length(L)^2) %checks through the indicie of each segment
        if L(k) ~= n
            Lnew(k) = 0;
        else
            Lnew(k) = L(k);          
        end
    end
    id = imdilate(Lnew,SE);
    ie = imerode(id,SE);
    seg = seg + ie;
    end
figure
imshow(seg)