Removing connections between an image containing digits

Hi,

I have been working on a project to extract the digits from a calculator screen. The full image is

Now I successfully extracted only the screen from the above full image and after some image processing operations, I could generate the following image

However, in the above image of the digits, some of them are overlapping. So it is becoming difficult to individually segregate each digit. Can anyone suggest how to remove the connections between the digits? Will any of the utilities in the function bwmorph() help?

[Image Analyst]

FYI: continuation of http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/68387-recognizing-text-from-image-of-a-calculator

[Soumyadip]

Yes. I am gradually progressing.

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

I might have already suggested this in your earlier series of questions, but did you try watershed segmentation, like in Steve's demo:

http://blogs.mathworks.com/steve/2006/06/02/cell-segmentation/

[Soumyadip]

Ok, I am trying to implement watershed segmentation in my code. Meanwhile, I was thinking of applying the 'thin' utility in the bwmorph function. There is a 'bridge' utility in bwmorph to form bridges between pixels, but I need just the opposite. Can you suggest anything regarding that?