DENOISING OF ECG IMAGE USING

NONLOCAL MEAN FILTER

Mr. Praveen K C1 and Mrs. M. Balasarswathy 2
1

P.G Student, M.E Applied Electronics , 2Asst Prof. Dept of Electronics And Communication Engineering,
1
Thiruvalluvar College of Engineeringand Technology , Vandavasi ,Tamilnadu, India,
E-mail :
pkcdub@yahoo.com
[1][2]

ABSTRACT

processing task, both as a process itself, and as a

Denoising is an important process in

image processing. A key problem here is, to keep
sharp edges in images. And it is critical to image
interpretation.

A new

approach

to

image

denoising which avoids the problem of edge

degradation

is

the

nonlocal

means

filter,

introduced by Buadeset al. The nonlocal means

(NLM) filter, denoises images by averaging the
patches of images from different regions but
which have similar spatial structure, based on the
fact that natural images

component in other processes. Many ways to

denoise an image or a set of data exists. The main
property of a good image denoising models is that it
will remove noise while preserving edges.
Patch-based methods have an importance in the
recent period in the field of image processing, for a
variety of problems including denoising, in-painting.
In this paper describes the denoising of an ECG
image using Non Local Mean approach.
II. Improving the quality of denoising method

contain repeated

In the process of removing these items of

patterns. In the case of biomedical signals (ECG

contamination, normal filtering approaches can also

is an example) have a regular morphology that

unfavourably

repeats with slight variations, and therefore may

components. LPF may suppress high-frequency

be amenable to patch-based methods. In this

noise, and also distorts waveform spikes in

work the denoising of ECG using NLM filter is

Electrocardiogram.

affect

these

required

signal

successfully done.
Keywords: ECG, Denoising

III. EXISTING SYSTEM

I. INTRODUCTION
The

research

for

an

3.1 The Gaussian filtering

efficient

image

denoising technique is a challenge in the field of

The gaussian method noise is zero in

image processing. Most of the recently proposed

harmonic parts of the image and very large near

algorithms have not yet fulfil a required level of

edges or texture, where the Laplacian cannot be

applicability. But all these algorithms are not enough

small. As a consequence, the Gaussian convolution

to preserve the edges of images while doing

is optimal in flat parts of the image but edges and

denoising. Image denoising is an important image

texture are blurred

3.2 The anisotropic filtering

level value. Yaroslavsky (1985) averages pixels with

a similar grey level value

The anisotropic filter (AF) attempts to avoid

The Yaroslavsky filter is less known than

the blurring effect of the Gaussian by convolving the

more recent versions, namely the SUSAN filter

image u at x only in the direction orthogonal to

(1995) and the Bilateral filter (1998). Both

Du(x). This method noise is zero wherever u

algorithms, instead of considering a fixed spatial

behaves locally like a straight line and large in

neighbourhood , weigh the distance to the reference

curved edges or texture (where the curvature and

pixel x, If the grey level difference between two

gradient

regions is larger than a level, both algorithms

consequence, the straight edges are well restored

compute averages of pixels belonging to the same

while flat and textured regions are degraded.

region as the reference pixel. Thus, the algorithm

operators

take

high

values).

As

does not blur the edges. The problem with these

3.3 The Total Variation minimization

filters is that comparing only grey level values in a

single pixel is not so robust when these values are

The Total Variation minimization was

noisy.

introduced by Rudin, Osher and Fatemi. Given a

noisy image v(x), these authors proposed to recover
the original image u(x) as the solution of the
minimization problem
The

method

noise

of

the

Total

Variation

IV. Proposed Method

Non-local means filter
Non-local means filter was introduced by Buades in

minimization is

2005 based on non-local averaging of all pixels in

As in the anisotropic case, straight edges are

the image. The method was based on denoising an

maintained because of their small curvature.

image corrupted by white gaussian noise with zero

However, details and texture can be over smoothed

mean and variance. The approach of Non Local

if (Lagrange multiplier) is too small.

Means filtering is based on calculating each intensity

To prevent this from happening, Buades

of pixel from the entire image and hence it develops

suggested a better approach. The non-local means

the idleness caused due to the presence of same like

approach does not make the two assumptions

patterns and features in the image. In this method,

mentioned previously. Instead it assumes that the

the restored gray value of each pixel is obtained by

image contains an extensive amount of self-

the weighted average of the gray values of all pixels

similarity.

in the image.

3.4 The neighbourhood filtering

We call neighbourhood filter any filter
which restores a pixel by taking an average of the
values of neighbouring pixels with a similar grey

The application of the Euclidean distance to the

noisy neighborhoods raises the following equality
E||v(Ni) v(Nj)||22,a
= ||u(Ni) u(Nj)||22,a + 22
The pixels with a similar grey level neighborhood to v(Ni)
have larger weights in the average, see Figure 1. These
weights are defined as,

Figure 1: Self-similarity in an image. Pixels p and q1

have similar neighbourhoods, but pixels p and q2 do
not have similar neighbourhoods.

Where Z(i) is the normalizing constant

The weight assigned is proportional to the similarity

between the local neighborhood of the pixel under
consideration and the neighborhood corresponding
to other pixels in the image.

and the parameter h acts as a degree of filtering. It

Consioder a noisy image v= {v(i)} for a pixel I

controls the decay of the exponential function and

The

estimated

value

of

NL[v](i)

where the family of weights {w(i, j)}j depend on the

therefore the decay of the weights as a function of

the Euclidean distances.

Orgin
al
ECG

NLM
Filter

Filtere
d
ECG

similarity between the pixels i and j.

The similarity of

pixels i and j depends on the

similarity of the intensity gray level vectors v(Ni)

and v(Nj), where Nk denotes a square neighborhood
of fixed size and centered at a pixel k. The similarity

White
Gaussia
n noise

V. EXPERIMENT

is measured as a decreasing function of the weighted

Euclidean distance,

Here we used an image of ECG, which contains a

R_R segment and introduces a white Gaussian noise

||v(Ni)v(Nj) || 2,a, where a > 0 is the standard

in it. This noisy image is filtered by an NLM filter.

deviation of the Gaussian kernel.

And the result as shown below

VI. RESULTS
RESULT IMAGE INFORMATIONS

Nane

Size

Bytes

Class

Orginal 100X100 1000

Uint8

image
Noisy

100X100 1000

Uint8

Image
Filtered 100X100 8000

Double

Table 6.4.1: Image Information

HISTOGRAM OF THE RESULTS

Fig:3. Orginal ECG, Noisy Image and

Filtered image

VII. CONCLUSION
In this paper I have implementated the
nonlocal means denoising algorithm, which has
good in image processing, to denoising of ECG
signals. The results are promising, suggesting
the method can provide denoising while
minimizing signal distortion.

wander correction based on the empirical mode

decomposition,Comput. Biol. Med., vol. 38,
no. 1, pp. 113, 2008
3] T. He, G. Clifford, and L. Tarassenko,
Application
analysis

in

of

independent

removing

artefacts

component
from

the

electrocardiogram, Neural Comput. Appl., vol.

15, no. 2, pp. 105116, 2006.
[4] M. Kabir and C. Shahnaz, Denoising of

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