Adaptive pre-filtering techniques for colour image analysis

One important step in the process of colour image segmentation is to reduce the errors caused by image noise and local colour inhomogeneities. This can be achieved by filtering the data with a smoothing operator that eliminates the noise and the weak textures. In this regard, the aim of this paper is to evaluate the performance of two image smoothing techniques designed for colour images, namely bilateral filtering for edge preserving smoothing and coupled forward and backward anisotropic diffusion scheme (FAB). Both techniques are non-linear and have the purpose of eliminating the image noise, reduce weak textures and artefacts and improve the coherence of colour information. A quantitative comparison between them will be evaluated and also the ability of such techniques to preserve the edge information will be investigated

A superior edge preserving filter with a systematic analysis

A new, adaptive, edge preserving filter for use in image processing is presented. It had superior performance when compared to other filters. Termed the contiguous K-average, it aggregates pixels by examining all pixels contiguous to an existing cluster and adding the pixel closest to the mean of the existing cluster. The process is iterated until K pixels were accumulated. Rather than simply compare the visual results of processing with this operator to other filters, some approaches were developed which allow quantitative evaluation of how well and filter performs. Particular attention is given to the standard deviation of noise within a feature and the stability of imagery under iterative processing. Demonstrations illustrate the performance of several filters to discriminate against noise and retain edges, the effect of filtering as a preprocessing step, and the utility of the contiguous K-average filter when used with remote sensing data