Additive & Multiplicative Noises

Noise present in an image either in an additive or

multiplicative form .
Additive noise follows :
w(x, y) = s(x, y) + n(x, y),
Multiplicative noise satisfies :
w(x, y) = s(x, y) n(x, y),
Where ,s(x ,y) original signal,
n(x, y) noise introduced into the signal to produce the
corrupted image w(x, y), and
(x, y) pixel location.
Image algebra is done at pixel level.
Image multiplication changes intensity of the image.

Gaussian Noise
Gaussian noise is evenly distributed over the signal .This
means that each pixel in the noisy image is the sum of the
true pixel value and a random Gaussian distributed noise
value. Gaussian distribution has a bell shaped probability
distribution function given by,

where g represents the gray level, m is the mean or average

of the function, and is the standard deviation of the noise.
Graphically, it is represented as shown in Figure

Salt and Pepper Noise

Salt and pepper noise is an impulse type of noise
caused generally due to errors in data transmission
It has only two possible values. The probability of each is
typically less than 0.1. The corrupted pixels are set
alternatively to the minimum or to the maximum value,
giving the image a salt and pepper like appearance.
Unaffected pixels remain unchanged. For an 8-bit image,
the typical value for pepper noise is 0 and for salt noise
255.
Generally caused by malfunctioning of pixel elements in
the camera sensors, faulty memory locations, or timing
errors in the digitization process.

PDF for Salt and Pepper Noise

Salt and Pepper Noise (Contd..)

Salt and pepper noise with a variance of 0.05 is shown in
Figure 1

Speckle Noise
Speckle noise is an example of multiplicative noise.
Occurs in laser and SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) data.
Speckle noise follows a gamma distribution and is given as

where variance is a2 and g is the gray level.

The gamma distribution is given below

Speckle Noise (Contd..)

On an image, speckle noise (with variance 0.05) looks
as shown in Figure 2

1/f Noise (Brownian Noise)

The mathematical model for 1/f noise is fractional
Brownian motion.
Brownian motion is a non-stationary stochastic process
that follows a normal distribution.
It can be graphically represented as shown in Figure 3

Brownian Noise (Contd..)

On an image, Brownian noise would look like figure 4

Thermal Noise
The amount of thermal noise to be found in 1Hz
bandwidth in an actual device is given as:
N0 = kT (W/Hz)
Where:
K= Boltzmanns constant (1.3803 * 10-23 J/K)
T=absolute temperature (K)
At room temperature T=290K
N0 = 1.3803*290*10-23 = -04dbW/Hz = -174dBm/Hz
The noise power at temperature T with bandwidth Bw is
given as:
N=kTBw
N=-198.6dBW + 10logT + 10logBw

Impulse Noise
Impulse noise is noncontinuous and consists of irregular
pulses or noise spikes of short duration and of relatively
high amplitude.
These spikes are often called hits.
Impulse-noise degrades voice telephony only marginally,
if at all; however, it may seriously degrade error rate on
data or other digital circuits.

SNR
SNR is expressed in decibels (dB)-the amount by which
a signal level exceeds the noise within a specified
bandwidth.
The following are the suggested SNR values for various
services:
Voice: 40dB
Video: 45dB
Data~15db, based on specified BER and modulation
type.