Multistage order statistic filters for image sequence processing

The application of multistage order statistic filters (MOS) to the task of noise suppression in time-varying imagery is studied. It is shown that MOS filters efficiently preserve image structures under motion without motion compensation preprocessing. In particular, the families of multistage median and weighted median filters are considered. Motion preservation and statistical smoothing measures are derived. It is shown that spatiotemporal filtering allows for a significant improvement over both spatial and temporal filtering in terms of output image resolution and noise suppression