Adaptive Unsymmetrical Trim-Based Morphological Filter for High-Density Impulse Noise Removal

The modified decision-based unsymmetrical trimmed median filter (MDBUTMF), which is an efficient tool for restoring images corrupted with high-density impulse noise, is only effective for certain types of images. This is because the size of the selected window is fixed and some of the center pixels are replaced by a mean value of pixels in the window. To address these issues, this paper proposes an adaptive unsymmetrical trim-based morphological filter. Firstly, a strict extremum estimation approach is used, in order to decide whether the pixel to be processed belongs to a monochrome or non-monochrome area. Then, the center pixel is replaced by a median value of pixels in a window for the monochrome area. Secondly, a relaxed extremum estimation approach is used to control the size of structuring elements. Then an adaptive structuring element is obtained and the center pixel is replaced by the output of constrained morphological operators, i.e., the minimum or maximum of pixels in a trimmed structuring element. Our experimental results show that the proposed filter is more robust and practical than the MDBUTMF. Moreover, the proposed filter provides a preferable performance compared to the existing median filters and vector median filters for high-density impulse noise removal.