Reliable and fast structure-oriented video noise estimation

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a fast automated white-noise estimation method which gives reliable estimates in images with smooth and textured areas. This method is a block-based method that takes the image structure into account and uses a measure other than the variance to determine if a block is homogeneous. It uses no thresholds and automates the way that block-based methods stop the averaging of block variances. The proposed method selects intensity-homogeneous blocks in an image by rejecting blocks of structure using a new structure analyzer. The analyzer used is based on high-pass operators and special masks for comers to allow implicit detection of structure and to stabilize the homogeneity estimation. For a typical image quality (PSNR of 20-40 dB) the proposed method outperforms other methods significantly and the worst-case estimation error is 3 dB which is suitable for real applications such as video surveillance or broadcasts. The method performs well even in images with few smooth areas and in highly noisy images.