Patent ID: 6819804
Filing Date: 2004-11-16
Classification: G06K,H04N

Abstract:
A method of noise filtering a signal, the method comprising the steps of:estimating a type of noise in the signal; and enabling one of at least two noise filtering operations, the enabled noise filtering operation being a most suitable noise filtering operation for the estimated type of noise; wherein said enabling step comprises the sub-steps: enabling a median filtering operation if the estimated type of noise is long-tailed noise; and enabling a spatio-temporal rational filtering operation if the estimated type of noise is Gaussian noise or contaminated Gaussian noise; wherein the sub-step of enabling a spatio-temporal rational filtering operation comprises the further sub-steps: enabling a first spatio-temporal rational filtering operation if the estimated type of noise is Gaussian noise; and enabling a second spatio-temporal rational filtering operation if the estimated type of noise is contaminated Gaussian noise, and wherein the first spatio-temporal rational filtering operation takes into account at least one temporal direction, and the second spatio-temporal rational filtering operation takes into account at least one combination of a temporal direction and a spatial direction.