2017 International Conference on Nascent Technologies in the Engineering Field (ICNTE-2017)
Comparative Performance Study of various Filters
on High Density Impulse Noise
Jeet Kumar
Department of Computer Applications
Shri Ramswaroop Memorial Group of Professional Colleges
Lucknow, India
jeet@srmcem.ac.in
Abstract—The paper compares the performance of various filters of
different sizes on impulse noise in spatial domain. In this paper median
and adaptive median filters are used from non-linear category. For a
low density impulse noise, smaller size median filter is required while
for a high density impulse noise, either a larger size median filter is
required or a series of smaller size median filter is required. The
circular averaging filter also performs well in this case but at the
expense of more blurring. Moreover alpha trimmed mean filter works
well with a moderate density impulse noise. Finally the adaptive
median filter works best on impulse noise. The adaptive median filter
can recover the image even if the image is not visible in case of very
high density impulse noise. The paper demonstrates some novel
procedures involving a series of filters to handle high density impulse
noise.
Keywords—Impulse noise; spatial domain, median filter;
adaptive median filter; non-linear; circular averaging filter;
sharpening filter.
I. INTRODUCTION
From the process of image acquisition to digitization (sampling
& quantization) and enhancement, noise can corrupt the image
at any stage. An image can be considered as a 2-dimensional
(binary and gray scale image) or 3-dimensional (color image)
array of pixel with a defined bit depth and resolution. In this
paper we consider only 8-bit gray scale image. As for as the
organization of paper is concerned, firstly we differentiate
between the spatial domain and frequency domain techniques.
Then a brief description of noise models with impulse noise will
be carried out in the introduction section. The literature review
section will summarize the work done on impulse noise with
different variants of median filter. After this a comparative
study will be done on impulse noise with different densities.
Then result analysis section shows outcomes of comparison
followed by conclusion and future scope.
A. Spatial Domain and Frequency Domain Techniques
In spatial domain filtering techniques we work directly on
image pixels. The neighborhood operations work with the
image pixel values in the adjacent areas and the respective
values of a sub-image with the same dimensions as the adjacent
areas. The sub-image is called a filter or mask. The values in
the filter sub-image are referred to as coefficients. The process
consists of simple moving the filter mask from point to point in
an image [1].
978-1-5090-2794-1/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
B. Noise Model
In this paper we have assumed that the image is degraded only
due to additive noise. Moreover the noise is independent of
spatial coordinates and that it is uncorrelated with respect to the
image itself, i.e., there is no correlation between pixel values
and the values of noise components. The additive noise is given
by the relation [1]:
g(x, y) = f(x, y) + η(x, y)
1) Impulse Noise
Impulse noise is also known as salt-and-pepper noise. The
probability density function of impulse noise is give by
following equations [2]:
if z = a then p(z) = Pa
else if z = b then p(z) = Pb
else p(z) = 0
If the parameter b is greater than a, then the gray level of
parameter b will be shown as a light (salt) point in the image.
On the other hand, the parameter a will be shown as a dark
(pepper) point in the image. The impulse noise is known as
unipolar if either the probability Pa is zero or the probability Pb
is zero. If Pa or Pb is non-zero, and if Pa and Pb are
approximately same, impulse noise values will resemble salt-
and-pepper points randomly distributed over the image.
Therefore, bipolar impulse noise is also known as salt-and-
pepper noise.
C. Filters used for Salt and Pepper Noise
Median filters, adaptive median filters and alpha trimmed mean
filters are used in this paper from order statistics category.
Median filter changes the value of a pixel with the median of
the gray levels in the adjacent areas of that pixel. The original
value of the pixel is included in the computation of the median.
Median filters are very useful in some random noise with
considerably less blurring. Median filters are suitable specially
in the presence of both bipolar and unipolar impulse noise. The
filter formed by averaging the remaining pixels after trimming
some lowest and highest gray levels is called alpha trimmed
mean filter.
 2017 International Conference on Nascent Technologies in the Engineering Field (ICNTE-2017)

II. LITERATURE REVIEW The image in figure 2 is processed with median filter of size
3×3 resulting image is given in figure 3 and sharpened image is
Few approaches uses a threshold and the standard median to given in figure 4.
detect noise and replaces the original pixel value to a
appropriate new value that is near to the standard median or
sometimes same as standard median, moreover the center
weighted median (CWM) filter can also be used [2]. Some
researchers have used fuzzy median filter to remove impulse
noise [3]. Concept of implementing adaptive median filter by
recognizing noise pixels have been used by some authors [4].
Multi-scale median filters are also an effective tool for image
denoising [5].

III. COMPARATIVE STUDY ON IMPULSE NOISE

We have taken a gray scale image of size 256×256 with bit
depth 8. The study is being done on impulse noise with three
different densities low, moderate and high.

Fig. 3. Processed with median filter of size

3×3

Fig. 1. Original image

Fig. 4. Sharpened image

A. Applying Median Filter
1) Working with Low Density Impulse Noise
2) Working with Moderate Density Impulse Noise
The original image in figure 1 is corrupted with a low
The original image in figure 1 is corrupted with a moderate
density impulse noise as shown in figure 2 below:
density impulse noise as shown in figure 5 below:

Fig. 2. Low density impulse noise

Fig. 5. Moderate density impulse noise
 2017 International Conference on Nascent Technologies in the Engineering Field (ICNTE-2017)

The image in figure 5 is processed with median filter of
size 3×3 resulting image is given in figure 6 and sharpened
image is given in figure 7.
The image in figure 8 is processed with median filter of
size 3×3 resulting image is given in figure 9 and sharpened
image is given in figure 10. On the image given in figure
9, further processing is carried out with the median filter of
same size and the result is shown in figure 11; further
sharpened image is shown in figure 12.

Fig. 6. Processed with median filter of

size 3×3

Fig. 9. Processed with median filter of

size 3×3

Fig. 7. Sharpened image

Fig. 10. Sharpened image

3) Working with High Density Impulse Noise
The original image in figure 1 is corrupted with a high density
impulse noise as shown in figure 8 below:

Fig. 11. Further processed with median

filter of size 3×3
Fig. 8. High density impulse noise
 2017 International Conference on Nascent Technologies in the Engineering Field (ICNTE-2017)

Fig. 12. Further sharpened image Fig. 15. Further processed with median filter
of size 5×5
Now since 3×3 median filter is not suitable in this case,
therefore let us see the effect of 5×5 median filter. The image
in figure 8 is again processed with median filter of size 5×5
resulting image is given in figure 13 and sharpened image is
given in figure 14. On the image given in figure 13, further
processing is carried out with the median filter of same size and
the result is shown in figure 15; further sharpened image is
shown in figure 16.

Fig. 16. Further sharpened image

B. Noise Removal with Circular Averaging Filter

High density impulse noise shown in figure 8 will now be
Fig. 13. Processed with median filter of treated with circular averaging filter and result is shown in
size 5×5 figure 17 and blurring will be removed in figure 18.

Fig. 17. Processed with circular averaging

filter
Fig. 14. Sharpened image
 2017 International Conference on Nascent Technologies in the Engineering Field (ICNTE-2017)

applied on the image of figure 19, and the result is shown in

figure 20.

Fig. 20. Processed with adaptive median

Fig. 18. Sharpened image filter of size 11×11

C. Applying Adaptive Median Filter

Sometimes images are so much distorted that we cannot identify The image obtained in figure 20 is again processed by the
any pattern within the image; one such image is shown in figure adaptive median filter of same size and the result is shown in
19. figure 21.

Fig. 21. Processed again with adaptive

median filter of size 11×11

Fig. 19. Image degraded with very high density

impulse noise

To restore the image from very high density noise, a series

of restoration processes will be carried out. First of all an
adaptive median filter of larger size (11×11 in this example) is

Fig. 22. Sharpened Image

 2017 International Conference on Nascent Technologies in the Engineering Field (ICNTE-2017)
It can be easily seen that the noise is completely removed after
two successive rounds of adaptive median filters of large size.
However the results come with considerable blurring. By
continuing same treatment, i.e., by applying a series of
sharpening filters, the blurring can be considerably reduced, the
result is displayed in figure 22.
IV. RESULT ANALYSIS
It has been seen from experiments that 3×3 median filter is
suitable for low density impulse noise. For moderate density
noise we may perform a series of 3×3 median filters. For high
density noise 3×3 median filter is not suitable, we need a high
power filter with size 5×5. Moreover we have to perform 2-
level filtering with 5×5 filters to remove high density noise.
Finally to handle very high density noise, a series of adaptive
mean filter is required.
V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE
High power filters are capable to remove high density noise but
comes with blurring as a side effect. Since salt and pepper noise
exhibits sharp transition in pixel values therefore in order to
remove salt and pepper noise, the sharp transitions must be
reduced and blurring comes as side effect. Moreover disk filters
are also effective in high density noise but still leaves blurring
in the image. The alpha trimmed mean filter is suitable for low
to moderate density impulse noise but it is not suitable for high
density impulse noise.
Moreover the circular averaging filter results in more blurring.
We can easily observe that the adaptive median filter or a series
of median filters (in case of high density noise) shows the
excellent results on impulse noise. The work is further extended
to colour images.
REFERENCES
[1] Gonzalez RC, Woods RE. Digital image processing, 2nd ed; 2007.
[2] Chang CC, Hsiao JY, Hsieh CP. An adaptive median filter for image
denoising; 2008.
[3] Sravani B, Rao MVN.Removing of high density salt and pepper noise using
fuzzy median filter; 2014.
[4] Xie Y, Zhang X, Zhu Z, Wang Q. An adaptive median filter using local
texture information in images, 2014.
[5] Wang X, Multiscale median filter for image denoising; 2010.