We propose a bilateral filter with a locally controlled domain kernel for
directional edge-preserving smoothing. Traditional bilateral filters use a
range kernel, which is responsible for edge preservation, and a fixed domain
kernel that performs smoothing. Our intuition is that orientation and
anisotropy of image structures should be incorporated into the domain kernel
while smoothing. For this purpose, we employ an oriented Gaussian domain kernel
locally controlled by a structure tensor. The oriented domain kernel combined
with a range kernel forms the directional bilateral filter. The two kernels
assist each other in effectively suppressing the influence of the outliers
while smoothing. To find the optimal parameters of the directional bilateral
filter, we propose the use of Stein's unbiased risk estimate (SURE). We test
the capabilities of the kernels separately as well as together, first on
synthetic images, and then on real endoscopic images. The directional bilateral
filter has better denoising performance than the Gaussian bilateral filter at
various noise levels in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR)
