Fast detection and removal of impulsive noise using peer groups and fuzzy metrics

A novel approach to impulsive noise detection in color images is introduced. In the paper, the peer group concept is redefined by means of a certain fuzzy metric. This concept is employed for the fast detection of noisy pixels by taking advantage of the fuzzy metric properties. On the basis of the noisy pixel detection a switching filter between the arithmetic mean filter (AMF) and the identity operation is proposed. The proposed switching filter achieves a trade-off between noise suppression and signal-detail preservation and is faster than recently introduced switching filters based on the peer group concept. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.