To improve the performances of median filter and enhance the adaptability for the diverse density pepper and salt noises an adaptive median filter

based on the double windows and extremum-compressing filtering(DWECAMF)

is proposed for images corrupted with pepper and salt noises.The filter is improved from the standard median filter on the three standpoints: accurateness of noise detection

validity of noise removal and practicability of filtering speed.The method employs some strategies

such as using the large window for noise detection and the small window for noise removal

compressing the maximum and the minimum within the window for noise removal

and using the adaptive filter for impulsive noise removal-to improve the performances of the filter

and the floating filter strategy to accelerate the filtering speed.The experimental results show that the filters's three performances-mentioned above of the filter are all improved greatly.Meanwhile

the filtering performances of the filter are excellent for different noise densities

ranging from low densities

to high densities.