Decision-Based Marginal Total Variation Diffusion for Impulsive Noise Removal in Color Images

Abstract

Impulsive noise removal for color images usually employs vector median filter, switching median filter, the total variation 1 method, and variants. These approaches, however, often introduce excessive smoothing and can result in extensive visual feature blurring and thus are suitable only for images with low density noise. A marginal method to reduce impulsive noise is proposed in this paper that overcomes this limitation that is based on the following facts: (i) each channel in a color image is contaminated independently, and contaminative components are independent and identically distributed; (ii) in a natural image the gradients of different components of a pixel are similar to one another. This method divides components into different categories based on different noise characteristics. If an image is corrupted by salt-and-pepper noise, the components are divided into the corrupted and the noise-free components; if the image is corrupted by random-valued impulses, the components are divided into the corrupted, noise-free, and the possibly corrupted components. Components falling into different categories are processed differently. If a component is corrupted, modified total variation diffusion is applied; if it is possibly corrupted, scaled total variation diffusion is applied; otherwise, the component is left unchanged. Simulation results demonstrate its effectiveness.