Application of Type-2 Fuzzy Logic Filtering to Reduce Noise in Color Images

In this paper, we present a novel application of type-2 fuzzy logic to the design of an image processing operator called an impulse detector. The type-2 fuzzy logic based impulse detector can be used to guide impulse noise removal filters to significantly improve their filtering performance and enhance their output images. The design of the proposed impulse detector is based on two 3-input 1-output first order Sugeno type interval type-2 fuzzy inference systems. The internal parameters of the type-2 fuzzy membership functions of the systems are determined by training. The performance of the impulse detector is evaluated by using it in combination with four popular impulse noise filters from the literature on four different popular test images under three different noise conditions. The results demonstrate that the type-2 fuzzy logic based impulse detector can be used as an efficient tool to effectively improve the performances of impulse noise filters and reduce the impulse noise undesirable distortion effects.