IEEE Trans. Circuits & Systems II: Analog & Digital Signal Processing, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 78-80, Jan. 1999


Progressive Switching Median Filter for the Removal of Impulse Noise from Highly Corrupted Images

Zhou Wang1, 2, and David Zhang1

1Dept. of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

2 Dept. of Communication & Electronic Engineering, South China Univ. of Tech., Guangzhou, China

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Abstract: A new median-based filter, progressive switching median (PSM) filter, is proposed to restore images corrupted by salt-pepper impulse noise. The algorithm is developed by the following two main points: 1) switching scheme-an impulse detection algorithm is used before filtering, thus only a proportion of all the pixels will be filtered; and 2) progressive methods-both the impulse detection and the noise filtering procedures are progressively applied through several iterations. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is better than traditional median-based filters and is particularly effective for the cases where the images are very highly corrupted.

Index Terms: median filters; progressive switching median filter; impulse noise removal; highly corrupted images; median-based filter; restored images; salt-pepper impulse noise; switching scheme; impulse detection algorithm; progressive methods; noise filtering procedures