Spatially adaptive algorithm for impulse noise removal from color images

An effective method for removal impulse noise in corrupted color images is proposed. The method consists of two steps. Outliers are first detected using spatial relationships between the color image components. Then the detected noise pixels are replaced with the output of the vector median filter over a local spatially connected area excluding the outliers, while noise-free pixels are left unaltered. Simulation results in a test color image show a superior performance of the proposed filtering algorithm comparing with the conventional vector median filter. The comparisons are made using a mean square error, a mean absolute error, and a subjective human visual error criteria.