An algorithm for integrated noise reduction and sharpness enhancement

Noise reduction and image sharpening are techniques to improve video image quality. However, noise filters tend to blur image detail, while filters for image sharpening tend to increase noise. So, cascading the two filters does not always give the best performance. We present an integrated filter that reduces noise and sharpens details in a noisy video signal depending on local image statistics. This allows both features to be maximally exploited.