Rank Order Weighted Vector Median Filter

In this paper a novel adaptive noise attenuating and edge enhancing filter for color image processing is proposed. The new filtering design is based, like the vector median filter, on the minimization of aggregated weighted distances between pixels in a sliding filtering window. The weights which are assigned to the sequence of the sorted distances are decreasing functions of their ranks. In this way, the largest distances are taken to the aggregated distance with the smallest weights, which ensures much better noise reduction properties of the described filter. Additionally, the proposed method has a unique ability to strengthen the edges of the noisy image objects. This valuable deblurring property can be useful in many applications which require reliable impulse noise reduction and efficient edge sharpening of color images. Keywordscolor image enhancement; impulse noise reduction; edge sharpening; vector median filter.