Self-adaptive algorithm of impulsive noise reduction in color images

In this paper a new approach to the problem of impulsive noise reduction in color images is presented. The basic idea behind the new image filtering technique is the maximization of the similarities between pixels in a predefined filtering window. The improvement introduced to this technique lies in the adaptive establishing of parameters of the similarity function and causes that the new filter adapts itself to the fraction of corrupted image pixels. The new method preserves edges, corners and fine image details, is relatively fast and easy to implement. The results show that the proposed method outperforms most of the basic algorithms for the reduction of impulsive noise in color images. (C) 2002 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.