Patent ID: 8224085

Claim:
A method for providing a noise-reduced value for a color pixel from a digital image having panchromatic pixels and color pixels, comprising: a. providing a first image having sparsely sampled panchromatic pixels and color pixels corresponding to at least two color photoresponses; b. interpolating the panchromatic pixels to provide a full-resolution panchromatic image; and c. providing a noise-reduced value for a particular color pixel in the first image, by: i. selecting a neighborhood of color pixels surrounding and including the particular color pixel, each selected color pixel having a value and having the same color photoresponse as the particular color pixel; ii. selecting a neighborhood of panchromatic pixels from the full-resolution panchromatic image, each selected panchromatic pixel having a value and being associated by location with a color pixel in the selected neighborhood of color pixels; and iii. using the values of the pixels from the selected neighborhoods of color and panchromatic pixels to provide the noise reduced value for the particular color pixel, wherein using the values of the pixels from the selected neighborhoods of color and panchromatic pixels includes setting a spatial color pixel difference averaged over the neighborhood of color pixels equal to a spatial panchromatic pixel difference averaged over the neighborhood of panchromatic pixels.