%0 Journal Article %A DU Shulin %A QIU Weigen %A ZHANG Lichen %T Review of Component Tree Theory and Methods %D 2019 %R 10.3778/j.issn.1002-8331.1903-0187 %J Computer Engineering and Applications %P 44-53 %V 55 %N 12 %X Component tree method is the further development of mathematical morphology theory and method. It uses a series of threshold sets to generate connected components, and constructs the hierarchical relations on them. A series of efficient image processing algorithms developed by using the component tree method are very suitable for the rapid extraction of the underlying features of the image, and have been widely used in many fields, especially in the field of medical image processing. In this paper, the development and present situation of component tree methods are reviewed systematically, and the existing component tree building algorithms and image processing algorithms based on component trees are summarized. Finally, this paper looks forward to the research of component tree in multi-valued(color) image correlation field, the fast construction of tree, and the parallel processing algorithm. %U http://cea.ceaj.org/EN/10.3778/j.issn.1002-8331.1903-0187