Common Names: Gaussian smoothing
The Gaussian smoothing operator is a 2-D
convolution operator
that is used to `blur' images and
remove detail and noise.
In this sense it is similar to the mean filter, but it
uses a different kernel that represents the shape of a Gaussian
(`bell-shaped') hump. This kernel has some special properties which
are detailed below.
The Gaussian distribution in 1-D has the form:
where 
is the standard deviation of the
distribution. We have also assumed that the distribution has a mean of
zero (i.e. it is centered on the line x=0). The distribution is
illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1 1-D Gaussian distribution with mean 0 and
In 2-D, an isotropic (i.e. circularly symmetric) Gaussian has the form:
This distribution is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2 2-D Gaussian distribution with mean (0,0) and
The idea of Gaussian smoothing is to use this 2-D distribution as a
`point-spread' function, and this is achieved by convolution. Since
the image is stored as a collection of discrete pixels we need to
produce a discrete approximation to the Gaussian function before we
can perform the convolution. In theory, the Gaussian distribution is
non-zero everywhere, which would require an infinitely large
convolution kernel, but in practice it is effectively zero more than
about three standard deviations from the mean, and so we can truncate
the kernel at this point. Figure 3 shows a suitable integer-valued convolution kernel that approximates a Gaussian with a of 1.0.
It is not obvious how to pick the values of the mask to approximate a Gaussian.
One could use the value of the Gaussian at the
centre of a pixel in the mask, but this is not accurate because the
value of the Gaussian varies non-linearly across the pixel.
We integrated the value of the Gaussian over the whole pixel
(by summing the Gaussian at 0.001 increments).
The integrals are not integers: we rescaled the array so that
the corners had the value 1.
Finally, the 273 is the sum of all the values in the mask.
Figure 3 Discrete approximation to Gaussian function with
Once a suitable kernel has been calculated, then the Gaussian smoothing can be performed using standard convolution methods. The convolution can in fact be performed fairly quickly since the equation for the 2-D isotropic Gaussian shown above is separable into x and y components. Thus the 2-D convolution can be performed by first convolving with a 1-D Gaussian in the x direction, and then convolving with another 1-D Gaussian in the y direction. (The Gaussian is in fact the only completely circularly symmetric operator which can be decomposed in such a way.) Figure 4 shows the 1-D x component kernel that would be used to produce the full kernel shown in Figure 3 (after scaling by 273, rounding and truncating one row of pixels around the boundary because they mostly have the value 0. This reduces the 7x7 matrix to the 5x5 shown above.). The y component is exactly the same but is oriented vertically.
Figure 4 One of the pair of 1-D convolution kernels used to calculate the full kernel shown in Figure 3 more quickly.
A further way to compute a Gaussian smoothing with a large standard deviation is to convolve an image several times with a smaller Gaussian. While this is computationally complex, it can have applicability if the processing is carried out using a hardware pipeline.
The Gaussian filter not only has utility in engineering applications. It is also attracting attention from computational biologists because it has been attributed with some amount of biological plausibility, e.g. some cells in the visual pathways of the brain often have an approximately Gaussian response.
The effect of Gaussian smoothing is to blur an image, in a similar fashion to the mean filter. The degree of smoothing is determined by the standard deviation of the Gaussian. (Larger standard deviation Gaussians, of course, require larger convolution kernels in order to be accurately represented.)
The Gaussian outputs a `weighted average' of each pixel's neighborhood, with the average weighted more towards the value of the central pixels. This is in contrast to the mean filter's uniformly weighted average. Because of this, a Gaussian provides gentler smoothing and preserves edges better than a similarly sized mean filter.
One of the principle justifications for using the Gaussian as a
smoothing filter is due to its
frequency response.
Most convolution-based smoothing filters act as
lowpass frequency filters.
This means that their effect is to remove high
spatial frequency components from an image. The frequency response of
a convolution filter, i.e. its effect on different spatial frequencies,
can be seen by taking the
Fourier transform
of the filter. Figure 5 shows the frequency responses of a
1-D mean filter with width 5 and also of a Gaussian filter with
= 3.
Figure 5 Frequency responses of Box (i.e. mean) filter (width 5 pixels) and Gaussian filter (
Both filters attenuate high frequencies more than low frequencies, but
the mean filter exhibits oscillations in its frequency response. The
Gaussian on the other hand shows no oscillations. In fact, the shape
of the frequency response curve is itself (half a) Gaussian. So by
choosing an appropriately sized Gaussian filter we can be fairly
confident about what range of spatial frequencies are still present in
the image after filtering, which is not the case of the mean filter.
This has consequences for some edge detection techniques, as mentioned
in the section on
zero crossings.
(The Gaussian filter
also turns out to be very similar to the optimal smoothing filter for
edge detection under the criteria used to derive the Canny
edge detector.)
We use
to illustrate the effect of smoothing with successively larger and larger Gaussian filters.
The image
shows the effect of filtering with a Gaussian of
= 1.0 (and kernel size 5×5).
The image
shows the effect of filtering with a Gaussian of
= 2.0 (and kernel size 9×9).
The image
shows the effect of filtering with a Gaussian of
= 4.0 (and kernel size 15×15).
We now consider using the Gaussian filter for noise reduction. For example, consider the image
which has been
corrupted by Gaussian noise with a mean of zero and
= 8. Smoothing this with a 5×5 Gaussian yields
(Compare this result with that achieved by the mean and median filters.)
Salt and pepper noise is more challenging for a Gaussian filter. Here we will smooth the image
which has been corrupted by 1% salt and pepper noise (i.e. individual bits have been flipped with probability 1%). The image
shows the result of Gaussian smoothing (using the same convolution as above). Compare this with the original
Notice that much of the noise still exists and that, although it has decreased in magnitude somewhat, it has been smeared out over a larger spatial region. Increasing the standard deviation continues to reduce/blur the intensity of the noise, but also attenuates high frequency detail (e.g. edges) significantly, as shown in
This type of noise is better reduced using median filtering, conservative smoothing or Crimmins Speckle Removal.
You can interactively experiment with this operator by clicking here.
= 13) corrupted image
compute both mean filter and Gaussian filter smoothing at various scales, and compare each in terms of noise removal vs loss of detail.
= s.
E. Davies Machine Vision: Theory, Algorithms and Practicalities, Academic Press, 1990, pp 42 - 44.
R. Gonzalez and R. Woods Digital Image Processing, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1992, p 191.
R. Haralick and L. Shapiro Computer and Robot Vision, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1992, Vol. 1, Chap. 7.
B. Horn Robot Vision, MIT Press, 1986, Chap. 8.
D. Vernon Machine Vision, Prentice-Hall, 1991, pp 59 - 61, 214.
Specific information about this operator may be found here.
More general advice about the local HIPR installation is available in the Local Information introductory section.
©2003 R. Fisher, S. Perkins,
A. Walker and E. Wolfart.
