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An Anisotropic Fourth-Order Diffusion Filter for Image Noise Removal

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Abstract

Fourth-order nonlinear diffusion filters used for image noise removal are mainly isotropic filters. It means that the spatially varying diffusivity determined by a diffusion function is applied on the image regardless of the orientation of its local features. However, the optimal choice of parameters in the numerical solver of these filters for having a minimal distortion of the image features results in forming speckle noise on the denoised image and a very slow convergence rate especially when the noise level is moderately high. In this paper, a new fourth-order nonlinear diffusion filter is introduced, which has an anisotropic behavior on the image features. In the proposed filter, it is shown that a suitable choice for a set of diffusivity functions to unevenly control the strength of the diffusion on the directions of the level set and gradient leads to a good edge preservation capability compared to the other diffusion or regularization filters. The comparison of the results obtained by the proposed filter with those of the other second and fourth-order filters shows that the proposed method produces a noticeable improvement in the quality of denoised images evaluated subjectively and quantitatively.

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  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

    Mohammad Reza Hajiaboli

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  1. Mohammad Reza Hajiaboli
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Correspondence to Mohammad Reza Hajiaboli.

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Hajiaboli, M.R. An Anisotropic Fourth-Order Diffusion Filter for Image Noise Removal. Int J Comput Vis 92, 177–191 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11263-010-0330-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11263-010-0330-1

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