Structure-aware adaptive bilateral texture filtering

Abstract

The classical bilateral filter is designed for preserving the structure of the image by utilizing the range and spatial kernel. However, its straightforward application on texture smoothing is not viable as certain modifications are required in a bilateral filter to exploit it as a precise tool for texture smoothing. It is worth noting that with numerous rectifications, several methods have been developed over the last few decades that employ a bilateral filter as a precise tool for texture smoothing. Although these methods are precise in preserving significant structural information, a loss in the sharpness of the structures transpires simultaneously. Moreover, these methods do smooth texture efficiently but at the same time, they also blur some prominent structures. In this paper, we have designed a novel structure-aware bilateral filter that incorporates the structural information throughout texture smoothing. The filtering is executed on individual pixel from the scale map by employing the spatial kernel. The experimental section reveals the supremacy of the proposed method with respect to texture smoothing and structure preservation. We have also made an effort to demonstrate the proposed method's efficiency in several applications, namely, edge detection, detail enhancement, and texture transfer.