Abstract: An adaptive vector median filter for removing the noise in the color image is designed and tested with the color microscopic image of cells in marrow. In the algorithm, first the average distance between vector median X_VM and all other vectors in a 3×3 window is computed and then noisy pixels are removed with adaptive selection of window size based on the average distance. When the window size is 1×1, the vector pixels should be unchangeable. The experiment with the color microscopic image of cells in marrow waw carried out and the results show that the filter can achieve a high degree of noise suppression and keeps the image sharpness. The adaptive vector median filter also shows a significant improvement over the regular vector median filter. The algorithm is rather simple to implement.

Key words: adaptive vector median filter, color microscopic image, cells in marrow