The Kaup-Kupershmidt operator is applied to the two-dimensional solution of the Airy-diffusion equation and the resulting filter is applied via convolution to image processing. The full procedure is implemented using Maple code with the package ImageTools. Some experiments were performed using a wide category of images including biomedical images generated by magnetic resonance, computarized axial tomography, positron emission tomography, infrared and photon diffusion. The Airy-Kaup–Kupershmidt filter can be used as a powerful edge detector and as powerful enhancement tool in image processing. It is expected that the Airy-Kaup–Kupershmidt could be incorporated in standard programs for image processing such as ImageJ.