A robust morphological gradient estimator and edge detector for color images

A new vector-wise scheme for the gradient estimation and edge detection in noisy color images is proposed. In color images, different types of noise may corrupt the image. To reduce the effects of noise in the gradient estimation, we introduce the RCMG-Median-Mean estimator. RCMG-Median-Mean is a combination of the robust color morphological gradient (RCMG), the median and the mean filters to accurately estimate both the gradient magnitude and the gradient direction at each pixel of a noisy color image. The simulation results show that the proposed method more accurately estimates the true gradient vector, has better corner detection and leads to better continuous edges with less computational complexity than the RCMG method.