A New Detection Statistic for Random-Valued Impulse Noise

Removal
Yiqiu Dong∗ Raymond H. Chan† Shufang Xu‡

Abstract
This paper proposes a new image statistic for detecting random-valued impulse noise. Combining
it with detail-preserving regularization, we obtain a powerful two-phase method for denoising even
for noise level as high as 60%. Simulation results show that our method is significantly better than
a number of existing techniques in terms of image restoration and noise detection.

Key words. random-valued impulse noise, noise detector, detail-preserving regularization, image
denoising.

1 Introduction
Images are often corrupted by impulse noise due to noisy sensors or communication channels [1].
There are two models of impulse noise: the easier-to-restore salt-and-pepper noise and the more difficult
random-valued impulse noise. This paper deals with the detection and denoising of random-valued
impulse noise.
Recently, a two-phase iterative method for removing random-valued impulse noise was proposed in
[2]. In the first phase, they use ACWM filter [3] to identify noisy pixels. In the second phase, these noise
candidates are restored by a detail-preserving regularization. The capability of this method is mainly
limited by the accuracy of the noise detector.
In [4], Garnett et al. introduced a local image statistic ROAD to identify impulse. For detecting
random-valued impulse noise, one drawback of ROAD is that some noise values may be very close to
those of their neighbors, in which case, the ROAD values may not be large enough to distinguish them.
In this paper, we define a new local image statistic based on ROAD. By this new statistic, the
differences between noisy pixels and noise-free pixels will be amplified so that the noise detection will be
more accurate. We use this new statistic in phase one of the two-phase method [2]. We have compared
our method with a number of methods. It outperforms the others in both image restoration and noise
detection. In particular, when the noise ratio is as high as 60%, it still can remove most of the noise
while preserving image details.
The outline of this paper is as follows. In Section II, we define the new statistic. Section III describes
our method in detail. Section IV includes simulation results to demonstrate the performance of the new
method. Finally conclusions are drawn in Section V.

2 Definition of ROLD
Suppose the gray-level value yi,j is in [0, 1]. Let ΩN denotes the set of coordinates in a (2N + 1) ×
(2N + 1) window centered at (0, 0), i.e.,

ΩN = {(s, t)| − N ≤ s, t ≤ N },
∗ LMAM, School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China(dyiqiu@math.pku.edu.cn).
† Department
of Mathematics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong(rchan@math.cuhk.edu.hk).
‡ LMAM, School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China(xsf@pku.edu.cn).

1
Mathematical Model for Multi-Channel Image Processing (MultIm’2006) 2

and let Ω0N = ΩN \(0, 0). Define dst as the absolute difference between gray-level values of yi+s,j+t and
yi,j , i.e.,
dst (yi,j ) = |yi+s,j+t − yi,j |, ∀(s, t) ∈ Ω0N .
Then we use a logarithmic function to amplify the middle range of its values. In order to keep it in [0, 1],
we use a simple truncation and a linear transformation:

Dst (yi,j ) ≡ 1 + max{loga |yi+s,j+t − yi,j |, −b}/b, ∀(s, t) ∈ Ω0N ,

where a, b are positive parameters to be chosen. Note that the value of b decides the truncation position
and the value of a controls the shape of the curve of the logarithmic function. The selections of the
parameters a and b have great effects on the accuracy of our detection. Based on [5], for an 8-bit gray-
level image, we choose a = 2 and b = 5. Arrange all Dst in an increasing order, and let Rk be the kth
smallest Dst for all (s, t) ∈ Ω0N . We define our local image statistic as
m
X
ROLDm (yi,j ) = Rk (yi,j ).
k=1

We name this statistic as “Rank-Ordered Logarithmic Difference”, and ROLD for short.

3 Our method
We combine the new noise detector ROLD with the detail-preserving regularization [6] to obtain a
new two-phase method. To ensure high accuracy of detection, we apply our method iteratively with
decreasing threshold. At every iteration, we decrease the threshold to include more noise candidates.
Suppose the noisy image is y. Our algorithm is as follows.
Algorithm 1:
Step 1: Set k = 0 and u(0) = y.
(k) (k)
Step 2: (Noise detection) If ROLD(ui,j ) > Tk , then ui,j is noise, and (i, j) ∈ Nk , the noise candidate
(k)
set; otherwise, ui,j is noise-free.
Step 3: (Noise restoration) Restore all pixels in Nk by minimizing the following function:
X µ X (k)
X (k)
¶
F (u(k+1) ) = ϕ(ui,j − u(k)
m,n ) + 2 ϕ(u i,j − y m,n ) ,
(i,j)∈Nk (m,n)∈Vi,j ∩Nk (m,n)∈Vi,j \Nk

where Vi,j is the set of the four closest neighbors of (i, j), and ϕ is an edge-preserving potential
(k+1) (k)
function [7]. For all (i, j) ∈
/ N , take ui,j = ui,j .
Step 4: Stop the iteration as soon as k is larger than Kmax , which is the maximum number of iterations.
Otherwise, set k = k + 1, and go back to Step 2.

4 Simulations
In this section, we will compare the image restoration and noise detection capability of our method
with a number of methods. For illustrations, the results for 512-by-512, 8-bit gray-level images “Lena”
and “Bridge” are presented here.
Mathematical Model for Multi-Channel Image Processing (MultIm’2006) 3

Table 1: Comparison of restoration results in PSNR (dB)

“Lena” image “Bridge” image

Method 20% 40% 60% 20% 40% 60%
SD-ROM Filter [8] 35.29 28.59 21.64 27.04 23.33 19.43
MSM Filter [9] 35.44 29.26 22.14 27.27 23.55 20.07
ACWM Filter [3] 36.07 28.79 21.19 27.08 23.23 19.27
Trilateral Filter [4] 36.70 31.12 26.08 27.31 24.01 20.84
Two-Phase Iterative Method [2] 36.57 32.21 24.62 27.66 24.60 20.89
Our Method 37.46 33.01 27.32 27.84 24.86 21.95

(a) (b) (c) (d)

(e) (f) (g) (h)

Figure 1: Results of different methods in restoring 60% corrupted images: (a) and (e) original image, (b)
and (f) the old two-phase iterative method, (c) and (g) the trilateral filter, (d) and (h) our method, .

4.1 Comparison of image restoration

In Table 1, we list the best results in PSNR for the two images with different noise ratios. From
Table 1, it can be seen that in all cases our method provides the best results. For 60% noise ratio, our
method outperforms all the others by more than 1 dB.
To compare the results subjectively, we give in Figures 1, enlarged areas of the images restored by
different methods. In the results of the old two-phase iterative method, there are still many noticeable
noise patches. Although no noticeable noise is obtained by the trilateral filter, the details, such as edges
and lines, are not restored well. In contrast, our method performs better, and can suppress the noise
successfully while preserving more details. Considering the abundance of image details and the high noise
level, the visual qualities of our restored images are quite good.

4.2 Comparison of noise detection

For good performance, the capability of noise detection is very important. Here, we compare our
method with all the methods in Table 1 that have noise detectors. Table 2 lists the number of undetected
noisy pixels (“miss” term) and the number of noise-free pixels which are identified as noise (“false-hit”
term).
Because some of the random-valued impulse noise values are not so different from their neighbors
as in salt-and-pepper noise, there may be much more noise-free pixels detected as noise when detecting
Mathematical Model for Multi-Channel Image Processing (MultIm’2006) 4

Table 2: Comparison of noise detection results for image “Lena”

40% 50% 60%

Method miss false-hit miss false-hit miss false-hit
SD-ROM Filter [8] 22842 411 32566 998 45365 2651
MSM Filter [9] 16582 7258 20857 10288 26169 15778
ACWM Filter [3] 16052 1759 23683 2895 32712 7644
Two-Phase Iterative Method [2] 13657 6192 13868 12693 23793 17573
Our Method 11459 6531 11690 10349 12424 14789

random-valued impulse noise. Therefore, for a good random-valued impulse noise detector, on one hand
it should be able to identify most of the noisy pixels, but on the other hand, its “false-hit” value should
be as small as possible. Comparing with others, our method can distinguish more noise pixels with fewer
mistakes. Even when the noise level is as high as 60%, our method can still identify most of the noisy
pixels.

5 Conclusions
In this paper, we propose a new local image statistic ROLD, by which we can identify more noisy
pixels with less false-hit pixels. We combine it with the detail-preserving regularization to get a powerful
method for removing random-valued impulse noise. Simulation results show that our method outperforms
a number of existing methods both visually and quantitatively.

References
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