COLOR IMAGE FILTERS - THE VECTOR DIRECTIONAL APPROACH

Processing of color image data using directional information has recei ved increased attention lately due to the introduction of the vector d irectional filters. These rank-ordered type filters utilize the direct ion of color vectors to enhance, restore and segment color images. Fir st, the different vector directional filters already in use are presen ted, focusing on their similarities and differences and, second, new a daptive vector directional filters are introduced, Fuzzy as well as ne arest neighbor structures are utilized to determine the weights in the proposed adaptive filters. Simulation studies involving color images are used to assess the performance of the different vector directional filters and to compare them with other commonly used nonlinear filter s. The simulation studies reported indicate that the new adaptive filt ers are computationally attractive and have excellent performance. (C) 1997 Society of Photo-Optical instrumentation Engineers.