Segmentation-based nonlinear image smoothing

One of the most commonly used image enhancement techniques is noise removal. The goal of a noise removal method is to remove noise while preserving the image structure. In this paper a segmentation-based image enhancement method is presented which confines image smoothing to the region interiors. Since the structure in the image is captured by segmentation, confining image smoothing to the region interiors does not cause any significant loss of this structure. In fact, region confined averaging enhances the contrast between boundaries, and hence sharpens the image at these boundaries. The result is an image with reduced noise, but that appears sharper than the original