Modified Adaptive Weighted Averaging Filtering Algorithm for Noisy Image Sequences

In order to avoid the influence of noise variance on the filtering performances, a modified adaptive weighted averaging (MAWA) filtering algorithm is proposed for noisy image sequences. Based upon adaptive weighted averaging pixel values in consecutive frames, this algorithm achieves the filtering goal by assigning smaller weights to the pixels with inappropriate estimated motion trajectory for noise. It only utilizes the intensity of pixels to suppress noise and accordingly is independent of noise variance. To evaluate the performance of the proposed filtering algorithm, its mean square error and percentage of preserved edge points were compared with those of traditional adaptive weighted averaging and non-adaptive mean filtering algorithms under different noise variances. Relevant results show that the MAWA filtering algorithm can preserve image structures and edges under motion after attenuating noise, and thus may be used in image sequence filtering.