An intensity independent fixed valued impulse noise detector for image restoration

Most of the impulse noise detectors used for detection of fixed valued impulse noise are effective only for salt and pepper or a band type noise occurring at the extreme ends of the allowed range of intensity levels. The performance of these detectors deteriorates drastically when fixed valued impulses occur anywhere within the allowed gray scale. In this paper, an impulse detection scheme is proposed which can effectively detect all types of fixed valued impulse noise and also differentiates between noisy and noise-free pixels of identical intensity levels. The improved performance of the proposed method is verified through extensive simulations for various fixed valued impulse noise models.