Declutter Operation

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Watch this video on YouTube to learn how to use this processing operation. Use the chapter indexing to skip to the detail you need.

The Declutter operation outputs a raster that is a copy of an input source raster, clipped to remove isolated cells and, optionally, islands and thin cell tendrils.

The operation outputs a physical raster as output and does not support batch processing.

Specify the input raster either by browsing to it or by selecting it from the “Recent Raster” drop menu button. You can also select a raster source, but you should ensure that raster source only contains a single raster file as no other files will be processed. To process all files in a multi-file raster source, use the Join operation first.

If you select a source raster that is in MRR format, then you will be able to “Edit MRR In Place”. When checked, the declutter operation will directly modify the source raster and no copy will be produced. It is not necessary to specify a destination raster in this scenario. You might use this option if you anticipate the operation will modify a small number of cells in a large raster. Editing the MRR can be more efficient, in this scenario, than copying the entire dataset.

Select the field in the raster that will be targeted. You can only target one field, but all bands in that field will be processed. If the field type is Image, ImagePalette, or Classified then only the first band needs to be processed. For a multi-banded Continuous type field, all bands will be processed independently. The only exception to this is if the field does not set the “ValidFlagPerBand” property. In this case, only the first band is processed and the validity changes are inherited by all other bands in the field.

Select the required output raster format and then browse to specify the output filename or select from the “Recent Output Rasters” drop menu button.

The operation proceeds by examining all the cells in a square NxN window centred on each valid cell. Set the window size by specifying the half-width. The full window width is 2xHalfWidth + 1. Note that as you increase the window size, the processing time will increase.

The rule that determines whether a cell is retained (unmodified) or invalidated (erased) is governed by the “Minimum Valid Cells” parameter. To be retained there must be at least N valid cells in the window, not counting the central cell. If there are less than the minimum number of valid cells in the window, then the central cell will be invalidated.

After you have processed the raster and invalidated one or more cells, it may be possible to invalidate more cells by running the operation a second time. This will depend on the parameters you have defined. The “Maximum Passes” parameter allows you to run the operation multiple times automatically. The operation will continue repeating the processing until the maximum number of passes has been reached, or no changes were made to the raster.