Abstract
This work presents an efficient fast parallel architecture of the Vector Median Filter (VMF) using combined hardware/software (HW/SW) implementation. The hardware part of the system is implemented using VHDL language, whereas the software part is developed using C/C++ language. The software part of the embedded system uses the NIOS-II softcore processor and the operating system used is μClinux. The comparison between the software and HW/SW solutions shows that adding a hardware part in the design attempts to speed up the filtering process compared to the software solution. This efficient embedded system implementation can perform well in several image processing applications.