Patent ID: 7889921

Claim:
A method for producing a noise-reduced digital image having panchromatic pixels and color pixels, comprising: a. providing a first image having panchromatic pixels and color pixels corresponding to at least two color photoresponses; b. providing from the first image a panchromatic image and interpolating the panchromatic image to provide a full-resolution panchromatic image; and c. using the full-resolution panchromatic image and the first image to produce the noise-reduced digital image by setting a plurality of color characteristics of the first image equal to corresponding panchromatic characteristics of the full-resolution panchromatic image at each color pixel location of the noise-reduced digital image, wherein the color and corresponding panchromatic characteristics include a median of directional gradients among color pixels in a valid pixel neighborhood of the first image and a median of directional gradients among panchromatic pixels in a valid pixel neighborhood of the full-resolution panchromatic image.