Image Restoration Using Joint Statistical Modeling in Space-Transform Domain

This paper presents a novel strategy for high-fidelity image restoration by characterizing both local smoothness and nonlocal self-similarity of natural images in a unified statistical manner. The main contributions are three-folds. First, from the perspective of image statistics, a joint statistical modeling (JSM) in an adaptive hybrid space-transform domain is established, which offers a powerful mechanism of combining local smoothness and nonlocal self-similarity simultaneously to ensure a more reliable and robust estimation. Second, a new form of minimization functional for solving image inverse problem is formulated using JSM under regularization-based framework. Finally, in order to make JSM tractable and robust, a new Split-Bregman based algorithm is developed to efficiently solve the above severely underdetermined inverse problem associated with theoretical proof of convergence. Extensive experiments on image inpainting, image deblurring and mixed Gaussian plus salt-and-pepper noise removal applications verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.Comment: 14 pages, 18 figures, 7 Tables, to be published in IEEE Transactions on Circuits System and Video Technology (TCSVT). High resolution pdf version and Code can be found at: http://idm.pku.edu.cn/staff/zhangjian/IRJSM

Exploiting Image Local And Nonlocal Consistency For Mixed Gaussian-Impulse Noise Removal

Most existing image denoising algorithms can only deal with a single type of noise, which violates the fact that the noisy observed images in practice are often suffered from more than one type of noise during the process of acquisition and transmission. In this paper, we propose a new variational algorithm for mixed Gaussian-impulse noise removal by exploiting image local consistency and nonlocal consistency simultaneously. Specifically, the local consistency is measured by a hyper-Laplace prior, enforcing the local smoothness of images, while the nonlocal consistency is measured by three-dimensional sparsity of similar blocks, enforcing the nonlocal self-similarity of natural images. Moreover, a Split-Bregman based technique is developed to solve the above optimization problem efficiently. Extensive experiments for mixed Gaussian plus impulse noise show that significant performance improvements over the current state-of-the-art schemes have been achieved, which substantiates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, to be published at IEEE Int. Conf. on Multimedia & Expo (ICME) 201

Recent Progress in Image Deblurring

This paper comprehensively reviews the recent development of image deblurring, including non-blind/blind, spatially invariant/variant deblurring techniques. Indeed, these techniques share the same objective of inferring a latent sharp image from one or several corresponding blurry images, while the blind deblurring techniques are also required to derive an accurate blur kernel. Considering the critical role of image restoration in modern imaging systems to provide high-quality images under complex environments such as motion, undesirable lighting conditions, and imperfect system components, image deblurring has attracted growing attention in recent years. From the viewpoint of how to handle the ill-posedness which is a crucial issue in deblurring tasks, existing methods can be grouped into five categories: Bayesian inference framework, variational methods, sparse representation-based methods, homography-based modeling, and region-based methods. In spite of achieving a certain level of development, image deblurring, especially the blind case, is limited in its success by complex application conditions which make the blur kernel hard to obtain and be spatially variant. We provide a holistic understanding and deep insight into image deblurring in this review. An analysis of the empirical evidence for representative methods, practical issues, as well as a discussion of promising future directions are also presented.Comment: 53 pages, 17 figure

Partition based vector filtering technique for suppression of noise in digital color images

A partition-based adaptive vector filter is proposed for the restoration of corrupted digital color images. The novelty of the filter lies in its unique three-stage adaptive estimation. The local image structure is first estimated by a series of center-weighted reference filters. Then the distances between the observed central pixel and estimated references are utilized to classify the local inputs into one of preset structure partition cells. Finally, a weighted filtering operation, indexed by the partition cell, is applied to the estimated references in order to restore the central pixel value. The weighted filtering operation is optimized off-line for each partition cell to achieve the best tradeoff between noise suppression and structure preservation. Recursive filtering operation and recursive weight training are also investigated to further boost the restoration performance. The proposed filter has demonstrated satisfactory results in suppressing many distinct types of noise in natural color images. Noticeable performance gains are demonstrated over other prior-art methods in terms of standard objective measurements, the visual image quality and the computational complexity

A Comprehensive Review of Image Restoration and Noise Reduction Techniques

Images play a crucial role in modern life and find applications in diverse fields, ranging from preserving memories to conducting scientific research. However, images often suffer from various forms of degradation such as blur, noise, and contrast loss. These degradations make images difficult to interpret, reduce their visual quality, and limit their practical applications. To overcome these challenges, image restoration and noise reduction techniques have been developed to recover degraded images and enhance their quality. These techniques have gained significant importance in recent years, especially with the increasing use of digital imaging in various fields such as medical imaging, surveillance, satellite imaging, and many others. This paper presents a comprehensive review of image restoration and noise reduction techniques, encompassing spatial and frequency domain methods, and deep learning-based techniques. The paper also discusses the evaluation metrics utilized to assess the effectiveness of these techniques and explores future research directions in this field. The primary objective of this paper is to offer a comprehensive understanding of the concepts and methods involved in image restoration and noise reduction

Video enhancement using adaptive spatio-temporal connective filter and piecewise mapping

This paper presents a novel video enhancement system based on an adaptive spatio-temporal connective (ASTC) noise filter and an adaptive piecewise mapping function (APMF). For ill-exposed videos or those with much noise, we first introduce a novel local image statistic to identify impulse noise pixels, and then incorporate it into the classical bilateral filter to form ASTC, aiming to reduce the mixture of the most two common types of noises - Gaussian and impulse noises in spatial and temporal directions. After noise removal, we enhance the video contrast with APMF based on the statistical information of frame segmentation results. The experiment results demonstrate that, for diverse low-quality videos corrupted by mixed noise, underexposure, overexposure, or any mixture of the above, the proposed system can automatically produce satisfactory results

Segmentation-assisted detection of dirt impairments in archived film sequences

A novel segmentation-assisted method for film dirt detection is proposed. We exploit the fact that film dirt manifests in the spatial domain as a cluster of connected pixels whose intensity differs substantially from that of its neighborhood and we employ a segmentation-based approach to identify this type of structure. A key feature of our approach is the computation of a measure of confidence attached to detected dirt regions which can be utilized for performance fine tuning. Another important feature of our algorithm is the avoidance of the computational complexity associated with motion estimation. Our experimental framework benefits from the availability of manually derived as well as objective ground truth data obtained using infrared scanning. Our results demonstrate that the proposed method compares favorably with standard spatial, temporal and multistage median filtering approaches and provides efficient and robust detection for a wide variety of test material

Adaptive Image Restoration: Perception Based Neural Nework Models and Algorithms.

Abstract This thesis describes research into the field of image restoration. Restoration is a process by which an image suffering some form of distortion or degradation can be recovered to its original form. Two primary concepts within this field have been investigated. The first concept is the use of a Hopfield neural network to implement the constrained least square error method of image restoration. In this thesis, the author reviews previous neural network restoration algorithms in the literature and builds on these algorithms to develop a new faster version of the Hopfield neural network algorithm for image restoration. The versatility of the neural network approach is then extended by the author to deal with the cases of spatially variant distortion and adaptive regularisation. It is found that using the Hopfield-based neural network approach, an image suffering spatially variant degradation can be accurately restored without a substantial penalty in restoration time. In addition, the adaptive regularisation restoration technique presented in this thesis is shown to produce superior results when compared to non-adaptive techniques and is particularly effective when applied to the difficult, yet important, problem of semi-blind deconvolution. The second concept investigated in this thesis, is the difficult problem of incorporating concepts involved in human visual perception into image restoration techniques. In this thesis, the author develops a novel image error measure which compares two images based on the differences between local regional statistics rather than pixel level differences. This measure more closely corresponds to the way humans perceive the differences between two images. Two restoration algorithms are developed by the author based on versions of the novel image error measure. It is shown that the algorithms which utilise this error measure have improved performance and produce visually more pleasing images in the cases of colour and grayscale images under high noise conditions. Most importantly, the perception based algorithms are shown to be extremely tolerant of faults in the restoration algorithm and hence are very robust. A number of experiments have been performed to demonstrate the performance of the various algorithms presented