High Density Impulse Noise Removal from Color Images by K-means Clustering based Detection and Least Manhattan Distance-oriented Removal Approach

Removal of impulse noise from color images is a stringent job in the arena of image processing. Impulse noise is fundamental of two types: Salt and pepper noise (SAPN) and Random valued impulse noise (RVIN). The key challenge in impulse noise removal from color images lies in tackling out the randomness in the noise pattern and in handling multiple color channels efficiently. Over the years, several filters have been designed to remove impulse noise from color images, but still, the researchers face a stringent challenge in designing a filter effective at high noise densities. In this study, a combination of K-means clustering-based detection followed by a minimum distance-based approach for removal is taken for high-density impulse noise removal from color images. In the detection phase, K-means clustering is applied on combined data consisting of elements from designated 5 x 5 windows of all the planes from RGB color images to segregate noisy and non-noisy elements. In the removal phase, noisy pixels are replaced by taking the average of medians of all non-noisy pixels and non-noisy pixels under 7 x 7 windows residing at least Manhattan distance from the inspected noisy pixel. Performance of the proposed method is evaluated and compared up against the latest filters, on the basis of well-known metrices, such as Peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and Structural similarity index measurement (SSIM). Based on these comparisons, the proposed filter is found superior than the compared filters in removing impulse noise at high noise densities.