Salt & pepper impulse detection and median based regularization using Adaptive Median Filter

The paper proposes a new adaptive 2D spatial filter operator for the restoration of salt & pepper impulse corrupted digital images. The proposed adaptive impulse filter effectively identifies the impulsive positions with a valid impulse noise detector and replaces them by a reliable signal determined from an appropriate neighborhood. Experimental results in terms of objective metrics and visual analysis show that the proposed algorithm performs better than many of the prominent median filtering techniques reported in terms of retaining the fidelity of even highly impulse corrupted images. High objectiveness and visual reliability is provided by the new restoration algorithm at lower quantum of impulse noise also. The computational efficiency of the adaptive median filter at all noise ratios is superior to most other top-ranking filters.