Abstract: A new algorithm for reducing impulsive noise in color images is presented. Firstly, the synchronous pulse burst property of spiking cortical model (SCM) and the characteristic that impulse noise is significantly different from surrounding image pixels are introduced to locate noises in each channel of color images. Secondly, according to the number and position of detected noises, just the noises are filtered by the properly selected window and related filtering methods, and free-noise pixels are kept unchanged. Experimental data show that the proposed method can preserve more image details while sufficiently remove noises sufficiently. The good visual effect and objective results are achieved for color images corrupted at heavy level.