Using Complex Wavelet Transform and Bilateral Filtering for Image Denoising

The bilateral filter is a useful nonlinear filter which without smoothing edges, it does spatial averaging. In the literature, the effectiveness of this method for image denoising is shown. In this paper, an extension of this method is proposed which is based on complex wavelet transform. In fact, the bilateral filtering is applied to the low-frequency (approximation) subbands of the decomposed image using complex wavelet transform, while the thresholding approach is applied to the high frequency subbands. Using the bilateral filter in the complex wavelet domain forms a new image denoising framework. Experimental results for real data are provided, by which one can see the effectiveness of the proposed method in eliminating noise.