A Retinex-based total variation approach for image segmentation and bias correction

Image segmentation methods usually suffer from intensity inhomogeneity problem caused by many factors such as spatial variations in illumination (or bias fields of imaging devices). In order to address this problem, this paper proposes a Retinex-based variational model for image segmentation and bias correction. According to Retinex theory, the input inhomogeneous image can be decoupled into illumination bias and reflectance parts. The main contribution of this paper is to consider piecewise constant of the reflectance, and thereby introduce the total variation term in the proposed model for correcting and segmenting the input image. This is different from the existing model in which the spatial smoothness of the illumination bias is employed only. The existence of the minimizers to the variational model is established. Furthermore, we develop an efficient algorithm to solve the model numerically by using the alternating minimization method. Our experimental results are reported to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, and its performance is competitive with that of the other testing methods.     

A variational model with hybrid Hyper-Laplacian priors for Retinex

Retinex aims at estimating real reflectance images by removing the effect of illumination. We propose a nonconvex variational model for Retinex with novel priors for reflectance and illumination. Based on the statistics of the gradients of reflectance and illumination, we use the hyper-Laplacian prior to characterize the gradients of reflectance, and the hybrid hyper-Laplacian and Tikhonov prior to characterize the gradients of illumination. An efficient alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is developed to solve the proposed model. Extensive numerical experiments show that the proposed method is comparable to the state-of-the-art methods quantitatively and qualitatively.     

A Retinex modulated piecewise constant variational model for image segmentation and bias correction

In this paper, we propose a novel Retinex induced piecewise constant variational model for simultaneous segmentation of images with intensity inhomogeneity and bias correction. Firstly, we obtain an additive model by decomposing the original image into a smooth bias component and a structure part based on the Retinex theory. Secondly, the structure part can be modeled by the piecewise constant variational model and thus deduced a new data fidelity term. Finally, we formulate a new energy functional by incorporating the data fidelity term into the level set framework and introducing a GL-regularizer to the level set function and a smooth regularizer to model the bias component. Based on the alternating minimization algorithm and the operator splitting method, we present a numerical scheme to solve the minimization problem efficiently. Experimental results on images from diverse modalities demonstrate the competitive performances of the proposed model and algorithm over other representative methods in term of efficiency and robustness.     

Non-convex and non-smooth variational decomposition for image restoration

The variational image decomposition model decomposes an image into a structural and an oscillatory component by regularization technique and functional minimization. It is an important task in various image processing methods, such as image restoration, image segmentation, and object recognition. In this paper, we propose a non-convex and non-smooth variational decomposition model for image restoration that uses non-convex and non-smooth total variation (TV) to measure the structure component and the negative Sobolev space $H^{-1}$ to model the oscillatory component. The new model combines the advantages of non-convex regularization and weaker-norm texture modeling, and it can well remove the noises while preserving the valuable edges and contours of the image. The iteratively reweighted l¹ (IRL1) algorithm is employed to solve the proposed non-convex minimization problem. For each subproblem, we use the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) algorithm to solve it. Numerical results validate the effectiveness of the proposed model for both synthetic and real images in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and mean structural similarity index (MSSIM).     

A novel enhancement method for low illumination images based on microarray camera

It is difficult but important to get clear information from the low illumination im-ages. In recent years the research of the low illumination image enhancement has become a hot topic in image processing and computer vision. The Retinex algorithm is one of the most popular methods in the field and uniform illumination is necessary to enhance low illumination image quality by using this algorithm. However, for the diff erent areas of an image with contrast brightness diff erences, the illumination image is not smooth and causes halo artifacts so that it cannot retain the detail information of the original images. To solve the problem, we gen-eralize the multi-scale Retinex algorithm and propose a new enhancement method for the low illumination images based on the microarray camera. The proposed method can well make up for the deficiency of imbalanced illumination and significantly inhibit the halo artifacts as well. Experimental results show that the proposed method can get better image enhancement eff ect compared to the multi-scale Retinex algorithm of a single image enhancement. Advantages of the method also include that it can significantly inhibit the halo artifacts and thus retain the details of the original images, it can improve the brightness and contrast of the image as well. The newly developed method in this paper has application potential to the images captured by pad and cell phone in the low illumination environment.     

结合àtrous算法与Retinex算法的医学图像增强

提出结合àtrous算法与Retinex算法的医学图像增强.方法在二进小波理论基础上,利用推广的二维àtrous算法对医学图像进行处理,对经过多级分解后的医学图像的低频利用连续非线性函数增强,而对分解后的多个高频采用改进的Retinex算法进行增强;最后,对增强后的低频和高频进行重构.经过反复仿真试验结果表明:方法在去除噪声的同时更好地保留了图像边缘特征,增强了图像细节信息和凸显图像的轮廓,并克服对比度下降的不足,较好地去除光晕现象,视觉效果好,层次感更丰富.     

A Nonlocal Total Variation Model for Image Decomposition: Illumination and Reflectance

In this paper, we study to use nonlocal bounded variation (NLBV) techniques to decompose an image intensity into the illumination and reflectance components. By considering spatial smoothness of the illumination component and nonlocal total variation (NLTV) of the reflectance component in the decomposition framework, an energy functional is constructed. We establish the theoretical results of the space of NLBV functions such as lower semicontinuity, approximation and compactness. These essential properties of NLBV functions are important tools to show the existence of solution of the proposed energy functional. Experimental results on both grey-level and color images are shown to illustrate the usefulness of the nonlocal total variation image decomposition model, and demonstrate the performance of the proposed method is better than the other testing methods.     

An edge driven wavelet frame model for image restoration

Wavelet frame systems are known to be effective in capturing singularities from noisy and degraded images. In this paper, we introduce a new edge driven wavelet frame model for image restoration by approximating images as piecewise smooth functions. With an implicit representation of image singularities sets, the proposed model inflicts different strength of regularization on smooth and singular image regions and edges. The proposed edge driven model is robust to both image approximation and singularity estimation. The implicit formulation also enables an asymptotic analysis of the proposed models and a rigorous connection between the discrete model and a general continuous variational model. Finally, numerical results on image inpainting and deblurring show that the proposed model is compared favorably against several popular image restoration models.     

A class of fractional-order multi-scale variational models and alternating projection algorithm for image denoising

The total variation model proposed by Rudin, Osher and Fatemi performs very well for removing noise while preserving edges. However, it favors a piecewise constant solution in BV space which often leads to the staircase effect, and small details such as textures are often filtered out with noise in the process of denoising. To preserve the textures and eliminate the staircase effect, we improve the total variation model in this paper. This is accomplished by the following steps: (1) we define a new space of functions of fractional-order bounded variation called the BV_α space by using the Grünwald–Letnikov definition of fractional-order derivative; (2) we model the structure of the image as a function belonging to the BV_α space, and the textures in different scales as functions belonging to different negative Sobolev spaces. Thus, we propose a class of fractional-order multi-scale variational models for image denoising. (3) We analyze some properties of the fraction-order total variation operator and its conjugate operator. By using these properties, we develop an alternation projection algorithm for the new model and propose an efficient condition of the convergence of the algorithm. The numerical results show that the fractional-order multi-scale variational model can improve the peak signal to noise ratio of image, preserve textures and eliminate the staircase effect efficiently in the process of denoising.     

Efficient Convex Optimization Approaches to Variational Image Fusion

Image fusion is an imaging technique to visualize information from multiple imaging sources in one single image, which is widely used in remote sensing, medical imaging etc. In this work, we study two variational approaches to image fusion which are closely related to the standard TV-$L_2$ and TV-$L_1$ image approximation methods. We investigate their convex optimization formulations, under the perspective of primal and dual, and propose their associated new image decomposition models. In addition, we consider the TV-$L_1$ based image fusion approach and study the specified problem of fusing two discrete-constrained images $f_1(x) ∈\mathcal{L}_1$ and $f_2(x) ∈\mathcal{L}_2$, where$\mathcal{L}_1$ and$\mathcal{L}_2$ are the sets of linearly-ordered discrete values. We prove that the TV-$L_1$ based image fusion actually gives rise to the exact convex relaxation to the corresponding nonconvex image fusion constrained by the discrete-valued set $u(x) ∈\mathcal{L}_1 ∪\mathcal{L}_2$. This extends the results for the global optimization of the discrete-constrained TV-$L_1$ image approximation [8, 36] to the case of image fusion. As a big numerical advantage of the two proposed dual models, we show both of them directly lead to new fast and reliable algorithms, based on modern convex optimization techniques. Experiments with medical images, remote sensing images and multi-focus images visibly show the qualitative differences between the two studied variational models of image fusion. We also apply the new variational approaches to fusing 3D medical images.     

A fractional partial differential equation based multiscale denoising model for texture image

Traditional integer‐order partial differential equation based image denoising approach can easily lead edge and complex texture detail blur, thus its denoising effect for texture image is always not well. To solve the problem, we propose to implement a fractional partial differential equation (FPDE) based denoising model for texture image by applying a novel mathematical method—fractional calculus to image processing from the view of system evolution. Previous studies show that fractional calculus has some unique properties that it can nonlinearly enhance complex texture detail in digital image processing, which is obvious different with integer‐order differential calculus. The goal of the modeling is to overcome the problems of the existed denoising approaches by utilizing the aforementioned properties of fractional differential calculus. Using classic definition and property of fractional differential calculus, we extend integer‐order steepest descent approach to fractional field to implement fractional steepest descent approach. Then, based on the earlier fractional formulas, a FPDE based multiscale denoising model for texture image is proposed and further analyze optimal parameters value for FPDE based denoising model. The experimental results prove that the ability for preserving high‐frequency edge and complex texture information of the proposed fractional denoising model are obviously superior to traditional integral based algorithms, as for texture detail rich images. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Variational image inpainting

Inpainting is an image interpolation problem with broad applications in image and vision analysis. Described in the current expository paper are our recent efforts in developing universal inpainting models based on the Bayesian and variational principles. Discussed in detail are several variational inpainting models built upon geometric image models, the associated Euler‐Lagrange PDEs and their geometric and dynamic interpretations, as well as effective computational approaches. Novel efforts are then made to further extend this systematic variational framework to the inpainting of oscillatory textures, interpolation of missing wavelet coefficients as in the wireless transmission of JPEG2000 images, as well as light‐adapted inpainting schemes motivated by Weber's law in visual perception. All these efforts lead to the conclusion that unlike many familiar image processors such as denoising, segmentation, and compression, the performance of a variational/Bayesian inpainting scheme much more crucially depends on whether the image prior model well resolves the spatial coupling (or geometric correlation) of image features. As a highlight, we show that the Besov image models appear to be less interesting for image inpainting in the wavelet domain, highly contrary to their significant roles in thresholding‐based denoising and compression. Thus geometry is the single most important keyword throughout this paper. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A VARIATIONAL IMAGE SMOOTHING MODEL WITH GLOBAL CONVERGENCE

A new smoothing method is proposed. The smoothing process adapts to image characteristics and is good at preserving local image structures. More importantly, in the theory under the conditions weaker than those in the original Kacanov method an approximal sequence of solutions to the variational problems can be constructed and the global convergence can be proved. And the conditions in the papers of Schn6rr(1994) and Heers, et al (2001) are discussed. Numerical solutions of the model are given.     

Nonlinear PDE Model for Image Restoration Using Second-Order Hyperbolic Equations

In this article we consider a novel nonlinear PDE-based image denoising technique. The proposed restoration model uses second-order hyperbolic diffusion equations. It represents an improved nonlinear version of a linear hyperbolic PDE model developed recently by the author, providing more effective noise removal results while preserving the edges and other image features. A rigorous mathematical investigation is performed on this new differential model and its well-posedness is treated. Next, a consistent finite-difference numerical approximation scheme is proposed for this nonlinear diffusion-based approach. Our successful image denoising experiments and method comparisons are also described.     

A PDE variational approach to image denoising and restoration

In this paper we discuss a general variational model for image restoration based on the minimization of a convex functional of gradient under minimal growth conditions. This approach is related to minimization in bounded variation norm and has a smoothing effect on degraded image while preserving the edge features.     

Nonlocal patches based Gaussian mixture model for image inpainting

We consider the inpainting problem for noisy images. It is very challenge to suppress noise when image inpainting is processed. An image patches based nonlocal variational method is proposed to simultaneously inpainting and denoising in this paper. Our approach is developed on an assumption that the small image patches should be obeyed a distribution which can be described by a high dimension Gaussian Mixture Model. By a maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation, we formulate a new regularization term according to the log-likelihood function of the mixture model. To optimize this regularization term efficiently, we adopt the idea of the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm. In which, the expectation step can give an adaptive weighting function which can be regarded as a nonlocal connections among pixels. Using this fact, we built a framework for non-local image inpainting under noise. Moreover, we mathematically prove the existence of minimizer for the proposed inpainting model. By using a splitting algorithm, the proposed model are able to realize image inpainting and denoising simultaneously. Numerical results show that the proposed method can produce impressive reconstructed results when the inpainting region is rather large.     

Implementation of high‐order variational models made easy for image processing

High‐order variational models are powerful methods for image processing and analysis, but they can lead to complicated high‐order nonlinear partial differential equations that are difficult to discretise to solve computationally. In this paper, we present some representative high‐order variational models and provide detailed descretisation of these models and numerical implementation of the split Bregman algorithm for solving these models using the fast Fourier transform. We demonstrate the advantages and disadvantages of these high‐order models in the context of image denoising through extensive experiments. The methods and techniques can also be used for other applications, such as image decomposition, inpainting and segmentation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于双分数阶变分光流模型的运动目标检测方法

变分光流法是常用的运动目标检测方法,应用场景中的光照变化会极大影响现存变分光流法的稳定性及准确率,提出基于分数阶的变分光流模型来提高光照变化鲁棒性.该模型将分数阶导数同时应用于经典变分光流模型的数据项及平滑项中;根据图像的数据特征,采用图像函数及光流向量函数的有限离散二重分数阶导数近似拟合求导结果计算光流向量,进而将光照变化的影响按比例分摊到了各周边像素点中,弱化了光流向量计算过程中光照变化对光流模型的影响.为避免同一像素点的二重分数阶导数覆盖了不同光流向量区域的问题,采用超像素分割来舍弃不在同一光流向量区域的像素点,从而保证了同一光流向量区域的整体性,从而进一步提高模型的光流估计准确率.在三大常用数据库及户外视频序列中进行实验,实验证明,在应用场景存在光照变化的前提下,基于双分数阶的变分光流模型优于其他算法;对比其他算法,文中算法的运算速度适中.     

IMAGE RESTORATION UNDER CAUCHY NOISE WITH SPARSE REPRESENTATION PRIOR AND TOTAL GENERALIZED VARIATION

This article introduces a novel variational model for restoring images degraded by Cauchy noise and/or blurring.The model integrates a nonconvex data-fidelity term with two regularization terms,a sparse representation prior over dictionary learning and total generalized variation(TGV)regularization.The sparse representation prior exploiting patch information enables the preservation of fine features and textural patterns,while adequately denoising in homogeneous regions and contributing natural visual quality.TGV regularization further assists in effectively denoising in smooth regions while retaining edges.By adopting the penalty method and an alternating minimization approach,we present an efficient iterative algorithm to solve the proposed model.Numerical results establish the superiority of the proposed model over other existing models in regard to visual quality and certain image quality assessments.     

Adaptive total variation regularization based scheme for Poisson noise removal

To better preserve the edge features, this paper investigates an adaptive total variation regularization based variational model for removing Poisson noise. This edge‐preserving scheme comprises a spatially adaptive diffusivity coefficient, which adjusts the diffusion strength automatically. Compared with the classical total variation based one, numerical simulations distinctly indicate the superiority of our proposed strategy in maintaining the small details while denoising Poissonian image. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.