Distance Measures for Reduced Ordering Based Vector Filters

Reduced ordering based vector filters have proved successful in removing long-tailed noise from color images while preserving edges and fine image details. These filters commonly utilize variants of the Minkowski distance to order the color vectors with the aim of distinguishing between noisy and noise-free vectors. In this paper, we review various alternative distance measures and evaluate their performance on a large and diverse set of images using several effectiveness and efficiency criteria. The results demonstrate that there are in fact strong alternatives to the popular Minkowski metrics

Fuzzy metrics and fuzzy logic for colour image filtering

El filtrado de imagen es una tarea fundamental para la mayoría de los sistemas de visión por computador cuando las imágenes se usan para análisis automático o, incluso, para inspección humana. De hecho, la presencia de ruido en una imagen puede ser un grave impedimento para las sucesivas tareas de procesamiento de imagen como, por ejemplo, la detección de bordes o el reconocimiento de patrones u objetos y, por lo tanto, el ruido debe ser reducido. En los últimos años el interés por utilizar imágenes en color se ha visto incrementado de forma significativa en una gran variedad de aplicaciones. Es por esto que el filtrado de imagen en color se ha convertido en un área de investigación interesante. Se ha observado ampliamente que las imágenes en color deben ser procesadas teniendo en cuenta la correlación existente entre los distintos canales de color de la imagen. En este sentido, la solución probablemente más conocida y estudiada es el enfoque vectorial. Las primeras soluciones de filtrado vectorial, como por ejemplo el filtro de mediana vectorial (VMF) o el filtro direccional vectorial (VDF), se basan en la teoría de la estadística robusta y, en consecuencia, son capaces de realizar un filtrado robusto. Desafortunadamente, estas técnicas no se adaptan a las características locales de la imagen, lo que implica que usualmente los bordes y detalles de las imágenes se emborronan y pierden calidad. A fin de solventar este problema, varios filtros vectoriales adaptativos se han propuesto recientemente. En la presente Tesis doctoral se han llevado a cabo dos tareas principales: (i) el estudio de la aplicabilidad de métricas difusas en tareas de procesamiento de imagen y (ii) el diseño de nuevos filtros para imagen en color que sacan provecho de las propiedades de las métricas difusas y la lógica difusa. Los resultados experimentales presentados en esta Tesis muestran que las métricas difusas y la lógica difusa son herramientas útiles para diseñar técnicas de filtrado,Morillas Gómez, S. (2007). Fuzzy metrics and fuzzy logic for colour image filtering [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/1879Palanci

Parallel Peer Group Filter for Impulse Denoising in Digital Images on GPU

A new two-steps impulsive noise parallel Peer Group filter for color images using Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) on a graphic card is proposed. It consists of two steps: impulsive noise detection, which uses a Fuzzy Metric as a distance criterion and a filtering step. For the needed ordering algorithm we are using the Marginal Median Filter with forgetful selection sort. Comparisons with other color filters for Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) architectures are presented, demonstrating that our proposal presents better performance in color preservation and noise suppression

Fuzzy averaging filter for impulse noise reduction in colour images with a correction step

[EN] In this paper we propose a fuzzy detection and reduction method for impulse noise in colour images. Detection is based on the fuzzyfication of a well-known statistic called ROD. The noise degrees obtained are used to reduce impulses by employing a fuzzy averaging between the input colour vector and a robust estimate of noise-free colour vector within the input neighbourhood. Fuzzy averaging has some advantages in terms of both noise reduction and detail preservation in front of detect and replace approaches because of threshold based decisions of the latter. However, robustness of the former is lower. We solve this problem by including a correction mechanism that checks the fuzzy noise degree of the output and replaces it with a robust colour vector either when noise has not been properly reduced or when a colour artefact has been introduced. We carry out a thorough study of the method parameter setting and give a convenient and robust setting. Experimental results show that our approach is very robust in front of four different types of impulse noise.The authors are very grateful to the reviewers for their valuable suggestions. Valentin Gregori and Samuel Morillas acknowledges the support of Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain under grant MTM 2015-64373-P (MINECO/FEDER, UE). Bernardino Roig and Almanzor Sapena acknowledges the support of Generalitat Valencians under grant AICO/2017/059.Gregori Gregori, V.; Morillas, S.; Roig, B.; Sapena Piera, A. (2018). Fuzzy averaging filter for impulse noise reduction in colour images with a correction step. Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation. 55:518-528. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvcir.2018.06.025S5185285

A multiresolution framework for local similarity based image denoising

In this paper, we present a generic framework for denoising of images corrupted with additive white Gaussian noise based on the idea of regional similarity. The proposed framework employs a similarity function using the distance between pixels in a multidimensional feature space, whereby multiple feature maps describing various local regional characteristics can be utilized, giving higher weight to pixels having similar regional characteristics. An extension of the proposed framework into a multiresolution setting using wavelets and scale space is presented. It is shown that the resulting multiresolution multilateral (MRM) filtering algorithm not only eliminates the coarse-grain noise but can also faithfully reconstruct anisotropic features, particularly in the presence of high levels of noise

Colour image smoothing through a soft-switching mechanism using a graph model

[EN] In this study, the authors propose a soft-switching ¿lter to improve the performance of recent colour image smoothing ¿lters when processing homogeneous image regions. The authors use a recent ¿lter mixed with the classical arithmetic mean ¿lter (AMF). The recent method is used to process image pixels close to edges, texture and details and the AMF is only used to process homogeneous regions. To this end, the authors propose a method based on the graph theory to distinguish image details and homogeneous regions and to perform a soft switching between the two ¿lters. Experimental results show that the proposed method provides improved results which supports the appropriateness of the graph theory-based method and suggests that the same structure can be used to improve the performance of other non-linear colour image smoothing methods.The authors acknowledge the support of Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under grant MTM2009-12872-C02-01, Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology under grant MTM2010-18539 and DGCYT under grant MTM2009-08933Jordan Lluch, C.; Morillas, S.; Sanabria Codesal, E. (2012). Colour image smoothing through a soft-switching mechanism using a graph model. IET Image Processing. 6(9):1293-1298. doi:10.1049/IET-IPR.2011.0164S129312986