Homogeneity-Based Directional Wiener Filtering of Video Noise

Abstract

This paper proposes a method for the reduction of white Gaussian video noise. The method achieves a maximum gain of 5.6 dB and is capable of preserving image content. It adapts window size, weighting and behavior to both image content and noise level in order to optimize the filtering. It starts by detecting the intensity-homogeneous direction from 8 different candidates. A variant of the Wiener filter is then applied directionally. The filtering is performed along homogeneous areas and not across edges. For noisy images, the filtering is increased automatically by using a larger kernel size. The proposed filter achieves better image preservation by turning off gradually for less noisy images. It works well for both highly noisy and good-quality images