Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-020-01737-1

ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Removal of high density salt and pepper noise in color image

through modified cascaded filter
B. Karthik1   · T. Krishna Kumar2 · S. P. Vijayaragavan3 · M. Sriram4

Received: 22 August 2019 / Accepted: 27 January 2020

© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract
A modified cascaded filter (MCF) for the restoration of color pictures that are extremely corrupted by salt and pepper noise
and random valued impulse noise are projected in this article. MCF algorithm restores the noisy pixel by trimmed median
value while other pixel values, 0’s and 255’s are present in the selected window using decision based median filter (DMF)
and when the pixel values are 0’s and 255’s then the noise pixel is replaced by mean value of all the elements present in the
selected window using unsymmetrical trimmed mean filtering. This modified cascaded filter proves better results than the
standard median filter, DMF, and alpha trimmed median filter, UTMF. The MCF is analyzed against various color images
and it provides superior peak signal-to-noise ratio and image enhancement factor.

Keywords  Color image · MCF · DMF · UTMF · PSNR · IEF

1 Introduction working out. In a similar fashion, the procedure of receiving

and analyzing visible expertise through digital computer is
Human beings are principally visual creatures, who rely solely named as digital image processing.
on the sense of imaginative and prescient. Imaginative and
prescient allows for humans to perceive and realize the arena
surrounding them in a greater method. Processing visible 2 Filtering techniques
know-how with the aid of the laptop has been drawing tremen-
dous concentration of investigators above the few epochs. The 2.1 Median filtering
procedure of getting and evaluating visual expertise by using
the humanoid species is mentioned to as vision, awareness or The median filter is the one authorized nonlinear filter used
for eliminating impulse noise, for the reason that the excel-
* B. Karthik lent de-noising energy and computational efficiency. Median
karthikguru33@gmail.com; karthik.ece@bharathuniv.ac.in Filter is a picture filter that is extra strong in instances where
T. Krishna Kumar white spots and black spots appear on the picture. For this
drkk@bharathuniv.ac.in procedure the middle price of the M × N window is considered
S. P. Vijayaragavan to exchange the black and white pixels (Eng and Ma 2001).
vijayaragavan.eee@bharathuniv.ac.in
M. Sriram 2.2 Arithmetic imply filtering
sriramm.cse@bharathuniv.ac.in
This can be a simple and straightforward mean filtering man-
1
Department of ECE, Bharath Institute of Higher Education ner. Let G be the given photograph and pixel x be a noisy
and Research, Chennai, India
pixel. The noisy pixel should have the worth 0[black] or
2
Bharath Institute of Higher Education and Research, 255[white]. Taking a moving kernel window of measure-
Chennai, India
ment m × n headquartered the pixel x, compute the normal
3
Department of EEE, Bharath Institute of Higher Education price of the noising snapshot G and replace the noising
and Research, Chennai, India
pixel worth through the ordinary worth. Sx,y be a set of
4
Department of CSE, Bharath Institute of Higher Education
and Research, Chennai, India

13
Vol.:(0123456789)

coordinates in a relocating kernel window (Oten and de
Figueiredo 1995).
2.3 Adaptive median filter
This filter shall be charity for distinguishing noising and
de-noising pixels after which practice the filtering manner.
A noisy pixel which has been retained by using the median
value and untainted pixels will likely be left unmoved. AMF
achieves well at low noise concentrations considering the
noising pixels which can be substituted via median values
are only a few. At bigger noise concentrations, window dimen-
sion needs to be accelerated to get improved noise removing
that will guide to less association among noising pixel ethics
and restored median pixel value (Hwang and Hadded 1995).
2.4 Decision‑based median filtering (DMF)
The primary phase of the modified cascaded filter is the deter-
mination-headquartered median filter. In normal median filter-
ing (SMF), every pixel price is restored through the median
of its regional values (Zhang and Karim 2002). The selection-
founded median filter however creates a rough approxima-
tion of whether or not a pixel is noising or no longer. Then,
the de-noising pixel ethics are retained and the noising pixels
were restored by the median value of their neighbours. As a
consequence the outcome of DMF is finer to the SMF.
2.5 Un‑symmetric trimmed‑mean filtering (UTMF)
The suggestion in the back of clipped mean is to discard
essentially the maximum likely outliers. Within the current
alpha-trimmed imply filtering (ATMF), the trimming is sym-
metric at either end. The quantity of values being clipped is
dependent upon the trimming element “α”. If the value of
α = 4, then “α/2” values are clipped together the ends and the
remainder pixels are around. It is found that greater the worth
of “α”, bigger is the noise suppression (Ng and Ma 2006). In
ATMF, mostly even un-noising pixel values are additionally
trimmed. This finally results in lack of photo element and
distorting of the image. In to beat the above quandary, an
un-symmetric clipped despicable filtering method is planned.
In UTMF (Eng and Ma 2001), the adornment is un-symmet-
ric i.e. The statistics of pixels clipped on the two ends aren’t at
all times equal (Srinivasan and Ebenezer 2007). The UTMF
exams whether or not the severe values of the sorted array,
acquired from 3 × 3 window, are impulse values and trim sim-
plest these impulse values. For illustration, if a 3 × 3 window
Table 1  Noise level and its Noise level Very low
signal noise ratio (SNR)
Signal noise ratio (SNR) ≥ 30 dB
13
B. Karthik et al.
does now not have any impulse, the UTMF desired now not
trim any ethics. On the opposite, the ATMF would trim values,
regardless of whether or not the 3 × 3 window has an impulse or
none. This possession of UTMF types it extra effective in noise
conquest than the existing ATMF (Jayaraj and Ebenezer 2010).
3 Proposed algorithm: MCF (modified
cascaded filter)
3.1 Cascaded connection of DMF and UTMF
DMF is superior to the SMF considering that it gets rid of
best noising pixels. The drawback of DMF is that, the median
pixel also be a noisy pixel price outcome in DMF flops to take
away noise with no trouble at excessive density. The UTMF
has higher noise taking away ability than the existing ATMF
(Luo 2006), as a result of the fact that it uses an un-symmetrical
adornment technique to reject only the impulse values. The
UTMF is used to take away the noise thoroughly. At very exces-
sive noise concentrations, around 80% there is obscuring of the
photograph. The projected cascaded algorithm makes use of a
grouping of both DMF (Lin 1998) and UTMF (Pomalaza-Racz
and Macgillem 1984), to additional give a boost to the output
obtained from the UTMF. The noisy snapshot is first admin-
istered using the resolution-headquartered median filter. The
output of DMF is given because the center to the UTMF. The
cascaded assembly is consequently used to dispose of salt and
pepper noise with a noise concentration as greater than 90%.
Table 1 shows the Noise level and its signal noise ratio (SNR).
The cascaded assembly produces the very best price of PSNR
(Chan et al. 2005; Azhar et al. 2019) and IEF (Chen and Wu
2001; Bisht and Dua 2018) price as shown in Tables 2 and 3.
4 Implementation
4.1 Implementation for color image
The Block Diagram shown in Fig. 1 and algorithm are used
to remove the noise from noisy image using MCF algorithm.
4.2 Algorithm (for color image)
The algorithm for MCF is:
Step 1 2-Dimension window “S × y” of size x = 3, y = 3
is chosen.
Low Median High Very high Extremely high
≥ 20 dB ≥ 15 dB ≥ 10 dB ≥ 5 dB < 5 dB
Removal of high density salt and pepper noise in color image through modified cascaded filter

Table 2  Comparison of PSNR Noise den- PSNR (in decibels)

values for various filtering sity ND (%)
methods SMF DMF ATMF UTMF α = 2 UTMF α = 4 UTMF α = 6 MCF (PA)

10 33.26 36.35 29.12 31.23 32.41 32.69 32.44

20 28.73 31.41 24.89 28.89 30.68 32.38 32.17
30 23.34 25.35 21.78 25.82 28.43 31.92 31.84
40 18.57 20.43 19.29 22.75 25.98 31.34 31.49
50 15.29 16.72 17.32 19.59 22.83 30.65 31.01
60 12.21 13.31 15.46 17.12 19.79 29.57 30.53
70 10.08 10.89 14.35 14.77 16.61 28.51 29.79
80 8.13 8.67 13.11 12.73 13.42 26.35 28.58
90 6.45 6.87 11.88 11.17 10.76 23.33 26.07

Table 3  Comparison of IEF ND (%) IEF

values for various filtering
methods SMF DMF ATMF UTMF MCF (PA)
α = 2 α = 4 α = 6

10 57.91 128.74 22.74 39.92 50.03 52.12 50.58

20 43.05 79.09 17.96 44.65 66.64 98.26 94.26
30 19.78 29.26 13.05 33.17 59.96 132.88 131.84
40 8.82 12.88 9.88 21.39 44.89 156.19 160.33
50 4.77 6.62 7.56 12.96 27.66 166.02 181.96
60 2.94 3.86 6.18 8.94 16.14 155.77 192.88
70 2.05 2.42 5.34 5.95 9.25 141.69 198.52
80 1.48 1.78 4.52 4.26 5.13 99.25 163.93
90 1.19 1.22 4.08 3.34 3.09 59.16 100.02

Fig. 1  Block diagram for

removal of noise from noisy
color image using MCF algo-
rithm

Step 2 Pixel values in the window are placed in ascending 5 Simulation results
order, and saved in a 1-Dimensional array.
Step 3 If the pixel value in the array is both ‘0’ or ‘255’, The efficiency of the cascaded filter is calculated at specific
the equivalent pixel values are eliminated, and the median phases of noise concentrations in between 10 and 90%. The
of nearer values are considered. outputs are shows in Fig. 1.
Step 4 The pixel being managed is restored by way of the The PSNR value is calculated by
median value analyzed. Transfer the window by using
Step:1, and repeat from Step:2–4. ⎛ ⎞
⎜ 2552 ⎟
PSNR = 10 log10 ⎜ � �∑� �2 ⎟ (1)
Repeat the mention steps, till the process complete for ⎜ ∕M × N
1 rij − xij ⎟
full color image. ⎝ ⎠
Figure 1 Shows the Block diagram for removal of noise
The IEF is calculated, utilizing the system
from noisy color image using MCF algorithm.

13
 B. Karthik et al.

COLOR IMAGE FILTERING OUTPUT-MCF ALGORITHM

Original Image Noisy Image SMF DMF ATMF UTMF PA

(a) (b) 30% Noise (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

(a) (b) 40% Noise (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

(a) (b) 50% Noise (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

(a) (b) 60% Noise (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

(a) (b) 70% Noise (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

(a) (b) 80% Noise (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

(a) (b) 90% Noise (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

(a) (b) 95% Noise (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

Fig. 2  Lena color image filtering output. a—original image, b—nois- mean filter (ATMF), f—output of un-symmetric trimmed mean filter
ing image, c—output of standard median filter (SMF), d—output of (UTMF), g—output of modified cascaded filter (PA)
decision-based median filter (DMF), e—output of alpha-trimmed

13
Removal of high density salt and pepper noise in color image through modified cascaded filter

Original Image Noisy Image SMF DMF ATMF UTMF PA

(a) (b) 50% Noise (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

(a) (b) 60% Noise (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

(a) (b) 70% Noise (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

(a) (b) 80% Noise (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

(a) (b) 90% Noise (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

Fig. 3  Electronic kit color image filtering output. a—original image, trimmed mean filter (ATMF), f—output of un-symmetric trimmed
b—noising image, c—output of standard median filter (SMF), d— mean filter (UTMF), g—output of modified cascaded filter (PA)
output of decision-based median filter (DMF), e—output of alpha-

�∑ �2 However in case of altered cascaded filter there may be an

256
s − rij
i,j=1 ij
IEF = � �2
∑256
s − xij
i,j=1 ij
where s—original image, r—noising image, x—restored
image, M × N—size of image.
In Figs. 2, 3, 4 the outputs of more than a few filters
similarly SMF (Column_3), DMF (Column_4), ATMF
(Column_5), UTMF (Column 6), and altered cascaded filter
(Column_7) are shown. Column 1 symbolizes the common
photo and column 2 symbolizes snapshot noising by way of
impulse (salt and pepper) noise (Lee and Bang 2019; Liu
et al. 2015). From column 3 SMF may give an equitable
output best up to 50%, the same factor clenches moral for
DMF and ATMF. An appropriate first-rate of the photograph
is got for 70% of noised photograph for the duration of the
restoration making use of UTMF (Srivastava et al. 2003).
outright restoration of 90% noise image which will also be
(2) observed from the final row under proposed algorithm.
Figures 2, 3 and 4 Shows the Color Image Filtering Out-
put-MCF Algorithm.
In this chapter, a comparative analysis has been made
among our own proposed schemes on salt and pepper noise
removal. Both objective as well as subjective evaluations
are made to derive an overall conclusion. It is observed
that SMF (Field 1987) and DMF (Mallat 1989) have supe-
rior performance over others in low density noise (range
Table 1). MCF performs better in both median and high
density impulse noise. Table 2 shows the Comparison of
PSNR values for various filtering methods.
Figure 5 shows PSNR versus Noise Density is received
from the values given in Table 2 for a specified 10% noised
image the maximum PSNR acquired is 36.52 when DMF is
used. For 20% noised snapshot the extreme PSNR is 32.35%

13

(a) – Original Image
(b) – Noising Image
(c) – Output of StandardMedian Filter (SMF)
(d) – Output of Decision-based Median Filter (DMF)
(e) – Output of Alpha-Trimmed Mean Filter (ATMF)
(f) – Output of Un-symmetric Trimmed Mean Filter (UTMF)
(g) – Output of Modified cascaded filter (PA)
(a) (b)
(f) (g)
Fig. 4  Sample color image 50% noise restored using MCF algorithm.
a—original image, b—noising image, c—output of standard median
filter (SMF), d—output of decision-based median filter (DMF), e—
Fig. 5  PSNR versus noise density
beneath UTMF (Pok et al. 2003), the pattern gradually alter-
ations in the direction of modified cascaded filter in terms of
increased PSNR as the noise densities multiplied as much as
90%. Figure 1 i.e., it may be determined the highest PSNR is
obtained utilizing the modified cascaded filter when in com-
parison with other recounted algorithm with noise density
extended from 30% ahead.
13
B. Karthik et al.
(c) (d) (e)
output of alpha-trimmed mean filter (ATMF), f—output of un-sym-
metric trimmed mean filter (UTMF), g—output of modified cascaded
filter (PA)
Fig. 6  IEF versus noise density
Figure 6 IEF versus Noise Density had shown a plot of
image Enrichment factor for quite a lot of filtering algo-
rithms. Just like the developments of db acquired in Table 3
here also the IEF is extra for the altered cascaded filter with
the photo is compared with SMF, DMF, ATMF and UTMF.
Nevertheless the general development is that photos are nois-
ing to the nastiest case and as a result the altered cascaded
filter will be actual so much apt in eliminating excessive
density noised photograph. Table 3 shows the Comparison
of IEF values for various filtering methods.
Removal of high density salt and pepper noise in color image through modified cascaded filter

Fig. 7  Lena image-MCF obtained output for random valued impulse noise

Table 4  Obtained PSNR and IEF

Noise density (%) PSNR (dB) IEF

30 38.9570 25.0468
40 36.5510 17.6718
50 34.2068 13.2275
60 31.4240 9.9905
70 26.4140 7.5376
80 21.3445 5.4451
90 8.4622 3.9973

Fig. 8  Noise density versus PSNR

13

Fig. 9  Noise density versuss IEF
6 Removal of high density random valued
impulse noise through MCF algorithm
To remove random valued impulse noise using MCF, noise
variance applied from 30 to 90% and resultant output
obtained using MCF algorithm. Restoration of 90% noise
image which will also be observed from the final row shown
in Fig. 7 under MCF algorithm obtained output for Random
Valued Impulse Noise. PSNR and IEF obtained in Table 4.
Figures 8 and 9 PSNR and IEF obtained.
7 Conclusion
The restoration of color images which are extremely nois-
ing by salt and pepper noise and random valued impulse
noise. This proposed algorithm replaced the noisy pixel by
using clipped median value. This algorithm proved better
outcome than the Standard Median Filter, Decision Based
Algorithm, Modified Decision Based Algorithm and Pro-
gressive Switched Median Filter. The modified cascaded
filter (MCF) was checked with various color images and the
presentation of the projected filter is loftier to the surviv-
ing filters. The projected algorithm predicted better Peak
Signal-to-Noise Ratio and Image Enhancement Factor, even
at exact high noise concentrations around 90%, the texture,
particulars and edges are conserved efficiently.
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