Thresholded median filter for the impulsive noise removal in digital images

In the paper a novel approach to the problem of impulsive noise removal in digital images is proposed. The new technique is based on the concepts derived from the robust statistics and can be regarded as a generalization of the median filter. The filter output is the pixel minimizing the trimmed cumulated sum of intensity distances to all other pixels belonging to the same filtering window. The performed experiments revealed that the new technique offers much better performance than the standard median filter. The unique feature of the new denoising scheme is its ability to sharpen image edges, while preserving its details.