Robust switching vector median filter for impulsive noise removal

We present an order-statistics-based vector filter for the removal of impulsive noise from color images. The filter preserves the edges and fine image details by switching between the identity (no filtering) operation and the vector median filter operation based on the robust univariate median operator Experiments on a diverse set of images and comparisons with state of the art filters shows that the proposed filter combines simplicity, flexibility excellent filtering quality, and low computational requirements. (C) 2008 SPIE and IS&T [DOI: 10.1117/1.2991415]