An iterative method for Bayesian Gauss–Markov image restoration

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new method for the restoration of images that have been degraded by a blur and an additive white Gaussian noise. The model adopted here is assumed to be Bayesian Gauss–Markov linear model. By exploiting the structure of the blurring matrix and by using Kronecker product approximations, the image restoration problem is formulated as matrix equations which will be solved iteratively by projection methods onto Krylov subspaces. We give some theoretical and experimental results with applications to image restoration.     

脉冲噪声下图像去模糊非光滑非凸最小化问题的近端线性化最小化算法

去除脉冲噪声是图像复原中的重要任务之一.我们提出一类非光滑非凸模型来恢复模糊和脉冲噪声污染的图像,该模型具有灵活的先验信息引入机制,如盒子约束或低秩等.为了求解所提非凸问题,我们采用近端线性化最小化算法.对于算法中的子问题,我们运用交替方向乘子法.在目标函数满足Kurdyka-Lojasiewicz性质的假设下,我们证明所提算法的全局收敛性.数值实验表明,在主观和客观质量评价方面,我们的方法优于$\ell_{1}$TV和非凸TV模型.     

An Adaptive Strategy for the Restoration of Textured Images Using Fractional Order Regularization

Total variation regularization has good performance in noise removal and edge preservation but lacks in texture restoration. Here we present a texture-preserving strategy to restore images contaminated by blur and noise. According to a texture detection strategy, we apply spatially adaptive fractional order diffusion. A fast algorithm based on the half-quadratic technique is used to minimize the resulting objective function. Numerical results show the effectiveness of our strategy.     

灰度图像复原的一种空间适应性向前向后扩散模型

该文考虑退化灰度图像复原问题. 首先, 作者利用时滞正则化方法定义退化图像去噪过程和去模糊过程之间的权重函数, 将激波过滤器边缘增强模型与水平集运动去噪模型相结合, 建立一种新的图像磨光增强偏微分方程. 然后, 证明该偏微分方程初值问题黏性弱解的存在唯一性. 最后, 给出该模型的部分数值算例.     

Quasi-Newton projection methods and the discrepancy principle in image restoration

In this work, the problem of the restoration of images corrupted by space invariant blur and noise is considered. This problem is ill-posed and regularization is required. The image restoration problem is formulated as a nonnegatively constrained minimization problem whose objective function depends on the statistical properties of the noise corrupting the observed image. The cases of Gaussian and Poisson noise are both considered. A Newton-like projection method with early stopping of the iterates is proposed as an iterative regularization method in order to determine a nonnegative approximation to the original image. A suitable approximation of the Hessian of the objective function is proposed for a fast solution of the Newton system. The results of the numerical experiments show the effectiveness of the method in computing a good solution in few iterations, when compared with some methods recently proposed as best performing.     

Image Denoising by a Local Clustering Framework

Images often contain noise due to imperfections in various image acquisition techniques. Noise should be removed from images so that the details of image objects (e.g., blood vessels, inner foldings, or tumors in the human brain) can be clearly seen, and the subsequent image analyses are reliable. With broad usage of images in many disciplines—for example, medical science—image denoising has become an important research area. In the literature, there are many different types of image denoising techniques, most of which aim to preserve image features, such as edges and edge structures, by estimating them explicitly or implicitly. Techniques based on explicit edge detection usually require certain assumptions on the smoothness of the image intensity surface and the edge curves which are often invalid especially when the image resolution is low. Methods that are based on implicit edge detection often use multiresolution smoothing, weighted local smoothing, and so forth. For such methods, the task of determining the correct image resolution or choosing a reasonable weight function is challenging. If the edge structure of an image is complicated or the image has many details, then these methods would blur such details. This article presents a novel image denoising framework based on local clustering of image intensities and adaptive smoothing. The new denoising method can preserve complicated edge structures well even if the image resolution is low. Theoretical properties and numerical studies show that it works well in various applications.     

A note on Taylor boundary conditions for accurate image restoration

In recent years, several efforts were made in order to introduce boundary conditions for deblurring problems that allow to get accurate reconstructions. This resulted in the birth of Reflective, Anti-Reflective and Mean boundary conditions, which are all based on the idea of guaranteeing the continuity of the signal/image outside the boundary. Here we propose new boundary conditions that are obtained by suitably combining Taylor series and finite difference approximations. Moreover, we show that also Anti-Reflective and Mean boundary conditions can be attributed to the same framework. Numerical results show that, in case of low levels of noise and blurs able to perform a suitable smoothing effect on the original image (e.g. Gaussian blur), the proposed boundary conditions lead to a significant improvement of the restoration accuracy with respect to those available in the literature.     

A “Nonconvex+Nonconvex” approach for image restoration with impulse noise removal

In this paper, we propose a new method for image restoration problems, which are degraded by impulsive noise, with nonconvex data fitting term and nonconvex regularizer.The proposed method possesses the advantages of nonconvex data fitting and nonconvex regularizer simultaneously, namely, robustness for impulsive noise and efficiency for restoring neat edge images.Further, we propose an efficient algorithm to solve the “Nonconvex+Nonconvex” structure problem via using the alternating direction minimization, and prove that the algorithm is globally convergent when the regularization parameter is known. However, the regularization parameter is unavailable in general. Thereby, we combine the algorithm with the continuation technique and modified Morozov’s discrepancy principle to get an improved algorithm in which a suitable regularization parameter can be chosen automatically. The experiments reveal the superior performances of the proposed algorithm in comparison with some existing 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.     

Adaptive local linear quantile regression

In this paper we propose a new method of local linear adaptive smoothing for nonparametric conditional quantile regression. Some theoretical properties of the procedure are investigated. Then we demonstrate the performance of the method on a simulated example and compare it with other methods. The simulation results demonstrate a reasonable performance of our method proposed especially in situations when the underlying image is piecewise linear or can be approximated by such images. Generally speaking, our method outperforms most other existing methods in the sense of the mean square estimation (MSE) and mean absolute estimation (MAE) criteria. The procedure is very stable with respect to increasing noise level and the algorithm can be easily applied to higher dimensional situations.     

A hybrid convex variational model for image restoration

We propose a new hybrid model for variational image restoration using an alternative diffusion switching non-quadratic function with a parameter. The parameter is chosen adaptively so as to minimize the smoothing near the edges and allow the diffusion to smooth away from the edges. This model belongs to a class of edge-preserving regularization methods proposed in the past, the ?-function formulation. This involves a minimizer to the associated energy functional. We study the existence and uniqueness of the energy functional of the model. Using real and synthetic images we show that the model is effective in image restoration.     

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.     

Using an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system-based interpolant for impulsive noise suppression from highly distorted images

A new impulsive noise (IN) suppression filter, entitled Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS)-based impulsive noise suppression Filter, which shows a high performance at the restoration of images distorted by IN, is proposed in this paper. The extensive simulation results show that the proposed filter achieves a superior performance to the other filters mentioned in this paper in the cases of being effective in noise suppression and detail preservation, especially when the noise density is very high.     

A new adaptive method for extrapolative forecasting algorithms

A quite serious problem when using time series forecasting methods is choosing the smoothing parameter (or parameters). Several methods have been developed, which employ variable, adaptively determined, smoothing factors. A new adaptive method for updating the value of smoothing parameters is introduced in this paper. The proposed model for exponential smoothing methods using one, two and three smoothing parameters is described and the accuracy of the method is measured.     

New time dependent pretreat models based on total variational image restoration

In this paper,we propose new pretreat models for total variation (TV) minimization problems in image deblurring and denoising.Specially,blur operator is considered as useful information in restoration.New models in form is equivalent to pretreat the initial value by image blur operator.We successfully get a new (L.Rudin,S.Osher,and E.Fatemi) ROF model,a new level set motion model and a new anisotropic diffusion model respectively.Numerical experiments demonstrate that,under the same stopping rule,the proposed methods significantly accelerate the convergence of the mothed,save computation time and get the same restored effect.     

Removal of blur in images based on least squares solutions

We propose an image restoration method. The method generalizes image restoration algorithms that are based on the Moore–Penrose solution of certain matrix equations that define the linear motion blur. Our approach is based on the usage of least squares solutions of these matrix equations, wherein an arbitrary matrix of appropriate dimensions is included besides the Moore–Penrose inverse. In addition, the method is a useful tool for improving results obtained by other image restoration methods. Toward that direction, we investigate the case where the arbitrary matrix is replaced by the matrix obtained by the Haar basis reconstructed image. The method has been tested by reconstructing an image after the removal of blur caused by the uniform linear motion and filtering the noise that is corrupted with the image pixels. The quality of the restoration is observable by a human eye. Benefits of using the method are illustrated by the values of the improvement in signal‐to‐noise ratio and in the values of peak signal‐to‐noise ratio. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive Segmentation Model for Images with Intensity Inhomogeneity based on Local Neighborhood Contrast

Segmentation of images with intensity inhomogeneity is a significant task in the field of image processing, especially in medical image processing and analysis. Some local region-based models work well on handling intensity inhomogeneity, but they are always sensitive to contour initialization and high noise. In this paper, we present an adaptive segmentation model for images with intensity inhomogeneity in the form of partial differential equation. Firstly, a global intensity fitting term and a local intensity fitting term are constructed by employing the global and local image information, respectively. Secondly, a tradeoff function is defined to adjust adaptively the weight between two fitting terms, which is based on the neighborhood contrast of image pixel. Finally, a weighted regularization term related to local entropy is used to ensure the smoothness of evolution curve. Meanwhile, a distance regularization term is added for stable level set evolution. Experimental results show that the proposed model without initial contour can segment inhomogeneous images stably and effectively, which thereby avoiding the influence of contour initialization on segmentation results. Besides, the proposed model works better on noise images comparing with two relevant segmentation models.     

A fast alternating minimization algorithm for total variation deblurring without boundary artifacts

Recently, a fast alternating minimization algorithm for total variation image deblurring (FTVd) has been presented by Wang, Yang, Yin, and Zhang (2008) [32]. The method in a nutshell consists of a discrete Fourier transform-based alternating minimization algorithm with periodic boundary conditions and in which two fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) are required per iteration. In this paper, we propose an alternating minimization algorithm for the continuous version of the total variation image deblurring problem. We establish convergence of the proposed continuous alternating minimization algorithm. The continuous setting is very useful to have a unifying representation of the algorithm, independently of the discrete approximation of the deconvolution problem, in particular concerning the strategies for dealing with boundary artifacts. Indeed, an accurate restoration of blurred and noisy images requires a proper treatment of the boundary. A discrete version of our continuous alternating minimization algorithm is obtained following two different strategies: the imposition of appropriate boundary conditions and the enlargement of the domain. The first one is computationally useful in the case of a symmetric blur, while the second one can be efficiently applied for a nonsymmetric blur. Numerical tests show that our algorithm generates higher quality images in comparable running times with respect to the Fast Total Variation deconvolution algorithm.     

An Examination of the Use of Adaptive Filtering in Forecasting

Adaptive filtering is a technique for preparing short- to medium-term forecasts based on the weighting of historical observations, in a similar way to moving average and exponential smoothing. However, adaptive filtering, as it has been developed in electrical engineering, attempts to distinguish a signal pattern from random noise, rather than simply smoothing the noise of past data. This paper reviews the technique of adaptive filtering and investigates its applications and limitations for the forecasting practitioner. This is done by looking at the performance of adaptive filtering in forecasting a number of time series and by comparing it with other forecasting techniques.     

Wavelet frame based blind image inpainting

Image inpainting has been widely used in practice to repair damaged/missing pixels of given images. Most of the existing inpainting techniques require knowing beforehand where those damaged pixels are, either given as a priori or detected by some pre-processing. However, in certain applications, such information neither is available nor can be reliably pre-detected, e.g. removing random-valued impulse noise from images or removing certain scratches from archived photographs. This paper introduces a blind inpainting model to solve this type of problems, i.e., a model of simultaneously identifying and recovering damaged pixels of the given image. A tight frame based regularization approach is developed in this paper for such blind inpainting problems, and the resulted minimization problem is solved by the split Bregman algorithm first proposed by Goldstein and Osher (2009) [1]. The proposed blind inpainting method is applied to various challenging image restoration tasks, including recovering images that are blurry and damaged by scratches and removing image noise mixed with both Gaussian and random-valued impulse noise. The experiments show that our method is compared favorably against many available two-staged methods in these applications.