Mathematical Problems in Engineering 
Volume 2004 (2004), Issue 1, Pages 79-91
doi:10.1155/S1024123X04110016

New filtering technique for the impulsive noise reduction in color images

B. Smolka,1 A. Chydzinski,1 K. N. Plataniotis,2 and A. N. Venetsanopoulos2

 1Department of Automatic Control, Electronics and Computer Science, Silesian University of Technology, 16 Akademicka Street, Gliwice 44-101, Poland
2Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, 10 King's College Road, , Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G4, Canada
Received 31 October 2001

Abstract

We present a novel approach to the problem of impulsive noise reduction for colorimages. The new image-filtering technique is based on the maximization of the similarities between pixels in the filtering window. Themethod is able to remove the noise component, while adapting itself to the local image structure. In this way, the proposed algorithm eliminates impulsive noise while preserving edges and fine image details. Since the algorithm can be considered as a modification of the vector median filter driven by fuzzy membership functions, it is fast, computationally efficient, and easy to implement. Experimental results indicate that the new method is superior, in terms of performance, to algorithms commonly used for impulsive noise reduction.