New class of order statistic filters for running median estimation

A novel low variance median estimator is presented. This order statistic based estimator is derived by means of a set-theoretic approach. It is shown that the proposed subset average median estimate (SAME) shares many good properties with both the mean and the median operator. Properties of this filter are controlled with two parameters: the window length and the subset size q. A good noise attenuation together with robust behavior can be obtained by selecting an appropriate subset length q. Numerical studies show that SAME filter outperforms the ordinary median filter in noise attenuation when is is applied to signals with various noise characteristics including Laplacian and Gaussian noise.<>