An Efficient Flicker Noise Reduction Method for Single Images

In this paper, we present a novel efficient flicker noise reduction method for single images scanned by overhead line sensors. The flicker noise here is perceived as horizontal bands which are not necessarily periodic. We view the flicker pattern as the noise of row cumulative histogram along the vertical direction, and propose two novel cumulative histogram filtering approaches to smooth the artifact, including using different Gaussian variance and padding the image. The proposed algorithm is then used to reduce the flicker noise in our scanned color images. The computational complexity of the proposed algorithm is further analyzed. The algorithm operates on singe images, and does not rely on the frequency of alternative currency, nor requires the horizontal bands are periodic. Experimental results show the superior performance of the proposed method in comparison to other existing methods.