A quantitative comparison of edge-preserving smoothing techniques

Edge-preserving smoothing techniques are compared by considering a test image which contains a central disk-shaped region with a step or a ramp edge against a uniform background. Free parameters are the amplitude of Gaussian noise added, the edge slope and the number of filtering iterations. The quantitative comparison measure is the normalised squared error between the filtered noisy image and the noise-free image, on the uniform image regions and on the transition region separately. The filters considered are analysed with respect to their performance under variations in the free parameters and their computer-time consumption. Results obtained are compared with published data available. © 1990