Method and apparatus for a morphology-preserving smoothing filter

A system, comprising a processor to receive an input signal and generate an output signal representative of a filtered version of the input signal by adaptively removing noise components from the input signal, wherein:

• the input signal includes a number of discrete samples;
• the processor is configured to determine a desired filtering level for each of the discrete samples of the input signal;
• and
• the processor is configured to determine an initial distance metric corresponding to an initial filtering level to determine the desired filtering level.

A system for filtering an input signal, comprising:

• means for receiving the input signal;
• means for generating an output signal representative of a filtered version of the input signal by adaptively removing noise components from the input signal;
• and
• means for determining a desired filtering level from a number of filtering levels for each discrete sample of the input signal,
• wherein the input signal includes a number of discrete samples, and the means for determining includes means for calculating an initial distance metric corresponding to an initial filtering level for each of the discrete samples of the input signal.