Why is this not recommended: fspecial('​gaussian',​hsize,sigm​a)

I have an N-D image with dimensions nRow x nCol x nChannel, where nChannel is 10. I would like to apply a Gaussian filter to each nRow x nCol layer. We have been using fspecial ('gaussian',hsize,sigma) because it can perform N-D filtering and gives satisfactory results for removing small features. However the fspecial help says "Use of fspecial with the 'gaussian' syntax is not recommended" and recommends substituting imgaussfilt or imgaussfilt3, but these won't work with N-D images.

Any idea of why this recommendation is in place? If it is for a good technical reason, is there another built in filter suitable for removing small features but preserving edges?

Answer 1

[KAE]

Matlab support said that the recommended replacement functions, "imgaussfilt" and "imgaussfilt3", are "generally faster and more advanced". Also they point out that the documentation for "imgaussfilt" states that the "A" matrix input can be of any dimension, so it should work for N-D images.

[KAE]

Sorry to get credit for accepting this answer when support was the actual source of the info, but I am not sure how to avoid this, and the answer needs to be Accepted to close out the question.

[Image Analyst]

That's fine for you to accept if you found an answer that is the best. Anyway, you don't get reputation points/credit for accepting your own answers.

[KAE]

Good, that makes sense.