Deterministic properties of the recursive separable median filter

Abstract

The recursive separable median filter has been successfully used to extract features from noisy two-dimensional signals. In many applications, it gives better noise suppression and edge preservation than the standard separable median filter. In this paper, a new approach is used for studying the deterministic properties of separable median filters. In particular, using threshold decomposition, the root structure of the recursive separable median filter is derived, where a root is a signal invariant to further filtering. It is shown that these root structures differ from those of their nonrecursive counterparts. It is also shown that any two-dimensional signal will converge to a root after repeated passes of the recursive separable median filter.