Patent ID: 7167598

Claim:
A method of reducing noise in an image by processing a digital signal representation of said image, said processing comprising the steps of: decomposing said digital signal representation into at least two detail images representing detail at successive scales; modulating pixels of at least some of said detail images by applying modulating coefficients to said pixels so as to generate modified detail images, wherein said modulation is an attenuation of pixel values if a local contrast-to-noise ratio is smaller than a predefined critical contrast-to-noise ratio and wherein no modulation is applied if the local contrast-to-noise-ratio is equal to or greater than said predefined critical contrast-to-noise ratio; and computing a processed digital signal representation by applying a reconstruction algorithm to the modified detail images, wherein said modulating coefficients are deduced from a single contrast-to-noise ratio image which represents the local contrast-to-noise ratio in each pixel at a predefined one of said scales.