Noise reduction of image sequences as preprocessing for MPEG2 encoding

This paper investigates the influence of three classes of noise reduction filters as preprocessors to MPEG2 coding of noisy image sequences. From each class we select a representative noise filter that performs well and we investigate the effects of these on the coding efficiency. We also investigate the use of an adjusted MPEG2 compression scheme for simultaneous noise reduction and compression. The quality of the filtered sequences are evaluated objectively and subjectively after MPEG2 coding at bitrates varying from 1.0to6.5Mbit/s.