Fast detection and impulsive noise removal in color images

In this paper, a novel approach to the impulsive noise removal in color images is presented. The proposed technique employs the switching scheme based on the impulse detection mechanism using the so-called peer group concept. Compared to the rector median filter and other commonly used multichannel filters, the proposed technique consistently yields very good results in suppressing both the random and fixed-valued impulsive noise. The main advantage of the proposed noise detection framework is its enormous computational speed, which enables efficient filtering of color images in real-time applications. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.