Removing salt-and-pepper noise in text/graphics images

Documents containing text and graphics components are usually acquired as binary images for computer processing purposes. Salt-and-pepper noise is a prevalent artifact in such images. Removing this noise usually requires iterative or multiple-pass processing, some techniques even cause distortions in document components. In this paper, we propose a novel method based on the kFill algorithm that can be accomplished in single-pass scan over the image. The algorithm is capable of removing simultaneously both salt noise and pepper noise of any sizes that are smaller than the size of document objects. Results of the proposed method are given in comparison with the well-known morphological operations