The trend in modern image noise filtering algorithms has been toward
structure preservation by using only those neighbouring pixels which are
similar to the current pixel in some way. In this paper we introduce a
technique call FUELS (Filtering Using Explicit Local Segmentation) which
explicitly segments the (m)x(m) region encompassing the current pixel and
filters using only those pixels from the same segment. By exploiting mask
overlap an effective mask size of (2m-1)x(2m-1) is obtained, as well as
robustness in regions which do not fit the image model. The algorithm can be
iterated, and our results show FUELS to outperform existing algorithms both
quantitatively and qualitatively.