Added parts of my developments to the vigra Computer Vision library...

Finally I managed to integrate the first few things, which I developed for my PhD thesis:

1. A local (window based) filter function environment. 
    applywindowfunction.hxx, medianfilter.hxx, specklefilters.hxx
It can be used to apply any given filter function on a complete image. Like convolveImage, this environment also supports correct border handling at the image boundaries. To demonstrate the use, I added a generic median filter and some of the most commonly used filters for speckle removal as well. 

2. A Coherence Enhancing Shock Filter
    shockfilter.hxx
This one was proposed by J. Weickert 2002 in "Coherence-Enhancing Shock Filters". It uses the Structure Tensor, a map and a weighted erosions/dilation function which perfoms "discrete upwinding" according to signums of the computed map. The results are images, that look like from Munch or van Gogh.

3. A correlation environment
    correlation.hxx
This one provides traditional correlation approaches using sliding windows as well as FFT powered fast versions of the cross-correlation as well as the normalized cross-correlation according to J.P. Lewis 1995: "Fast normalized cross correlation".

All of the included components are tested - tests are supplied by means of vigra tests (test/filters and test/correlation). And they are all documented by means of doxygen comments. All callable algorithms provide the new MultiArrayView calling mechanisms as well as the good old image iterators.
I think that it would be okay, if I replace the manual sum table creation by the one provided by the Integral image. The loss of execution speed shall be neglicable. See also my other comment below...