dilate a shell while keeping openings

I have a shell which is not concrete. while dilating, the opennings are going to be closed. how can I solve this problem. I've included main and dilated view (it's a 3D in fact)

logical(imerode(shell,strel('disk',voxel)))

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Not sure what the "problem" is. You didn't say. Yes, dilation will make gaps closer, of course. Do you not want the gaps to get smaller? Be very explicit in what the "problem" is and what you'd like as an output.

Perhaps you want to use bwmorph with the 'thicken' option which will dilate but not connect previously unconnected pixels.

Perhaps you want to look into edge linking options. I've attached a few demos for you.

[Mehri Mehrnia]

I want to preserve the opennings of the shell(it's 3D), bwmorph works on 2D images and bwmorph3 does not have "thicken"

[Image Analyst]

Call them and ask why it's not there. Ask for an alternative to thicken in 3-D.