Removal of various noises in dental X-ray images using selective median filter

Abstract

Image processing plays major role to provide additional information in medical diagnosis. Input images contain picture information as well as noise information. Noise information is added with the images during signal acquisition stage or in the transmission of image data. Salt & Pepper noise, Gaussian noise and Speckle noise is the major noises introduced in the images. Noise information may be interpreted as data and it may lead to severe problem. Linear and Non-linear filters are used to reduce these noises in the images. In medical image analysis, non-linear filters are preferred over linear filters because it preserves edge information. Dental X-ray image is used to identify the cavities and its depth. Average filter, median filter and wiener filter are the classical techniques used in many image processing applications. In this paper, three different noises (Salt &pepper, Gaussian and Speckle noise) are added and different filters (Average filters, median filter, Wiener filter) performances are analysed with the PSNR, SNR and MSE. Analysis shows that median filter is suitable for reducing salt & pepper noise and wiener filter is suitable for reducing Gaussian noise and speckle noise in the dental x-ray images. Selective median filter is a modified wiener filter. Median filter is used for the pixel value 0 and 255.For other pixel values wiener filter is used. Selective median filter is giving better result than traditional techniques.