Applying Quaternion Fourier Transforms for Enhancing Color Images

The Fourier transforms play a critical role in a broad range of image processing applications, including enhancement, analysis, restoration, and compression. Until recently, it was common to use the conventional methods to deal with colored images. These methods are based on RGB decomposition of the colored image by separating it into three separate scalar images and computing the Fourier transforms of these images separately. The computing of the Hypercomplex 2D Fourier transform of a color image as a whole unit has only recently been realized. This paper is concerned with frequency domain noise reduction of color images using quaternion Fourier transforms. The approach is based on obtaining quaternion Fourier transform of the color image and applying the Gaussian filter to it in the frequency domain. The filtered image is then obtained by calculating the inverse quaternion Fourier transforms.