A new fuzzy-based decision algorithm for high-density impulse noise removal

This paper proposes a new efficient fuzzy-based decision algorithm (FBDA) for the restoration of images that are corrupted with high density of impulse noises. FBDA is a fuzzy-based switching median filter in which the filtering is applied only to corrupted pixels in the image while the uncorrupted pixels are left unchanged. The proposed algorithm computes the difference measure for each pixel based on the central pixel (corrupted pixel) in a selected window and then calculates the membership value for each pixel based on the highest difference. The algorithm then eliminates those pixels from the window with very high and very low membership values, which might represent the impulse noises. Median filter is then applied to the remaining pixels in the window to get the restored value for the current pixel position. The proposed algorithm produces excellent results compared to conventional method such as standard median filter (SMF) as well as some advanced techniques such as adaptive median filters (AMF), efficient decision-based algorithm (EDBA), improved efficient decision-based algorithm (IDBA) and boundary discriminative noise detection (BDND) switching median filter. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm is evaluated using different standard images. From experimental analysis, it has been found that FBDA produces better results in terms of both quantitative measures such as PSNR, SSIM, IEF and qualitative measures such as Image Quality Index (IQI).