Generalized Forward-Backward Splitting

This paper introduces the generalized forward-backward splitting algorithm for minimizing convex functions of the form $F + \sum_{i=1}^n G_i$, where $F$ has a Lipschitz-continuous gradient and the $G_i$'s are simple in the sense that their Moreau proximity operators are easy to compute. While the forward-backward algorithm cannot deal with more than $n = 1$ non-smooth function, our method generalizes it to the case of arbitrary $n$. Our method makes an explicit use of the regularity of $F$ in the forward step, and the proximity operators of the $G_i$'s are applied in parallel in the backward step. This allows the generalized forward backward to efficiently address an important class of convex problems. We prove its convergence in infinite dimension, and its robustness to errors on the computation of the proximity operators and of the gradient of $F$. Examples on inverse problems in imaging demonstrate the advantage of the proposed methods in comparison to other splitting algorithms.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figure

First order algorithms in variational image processing

Variational methods in imaging are nowadays developing towards a quite universal and flexible tool, allowing for highly successful approaches on tasks like denoising, deblurring, inpainting, segmentation, super-resolution, disparity, and optical flow estimation. The overall structure of such approaches is of the form ${\cal D}(Ku) + \alpha {\cal R} (u) \rightarrow \min_u$ ; where the functional ${\cal D}$ is a data fidelity term also depending on some input data $f$ and measuring the deviation of $Ku$ from such and ${\cal R}$ is a regularization functional. Moreover $K$ is a (often linear) forward operator modeling the dependence of data on an underlying image, and $\alpha$ is a positive regularization parameter. While ${\cal D}$ is often smooth and (strictly) convex, the current practice almost exclusively uses nonsmooth regularization functionals. The majority of successful techniques is using nonsmooth and convex functionals like the total variation and generalizations thereof or $\ell_1$-norms of coefficients arising from scalar products with some frame system. The efficient solution of such variational problems in imaging demands for appropriate algorithms. Taking into account the specific structure as a sum of two very different terms to be minimized, splitting algorithms are a quite canonical choice. Consequently this field has revived the interest in techniques like operator splittings or augmented Lagrangians. Here we shall provide an overview of methods currently developed and recent results as well as some computational studies providing a comparison of different methods and also illustrating their success in applications.Comment: 60 pages, 33 figure

Convergence Rates with Inexact Non-expansive Operators

In this paper, we present a convergence rate analysis for the inexact Krasnosel'skii-Mann iteration built from nonexpansive operators. Our results include two main parts: we first establish global pointwise and ergodic iteration-complexity bounds, and then, under a metric subregularity assumption, we establish local linear convergence for the distance of the iterates to the set of fixed points. The obtained iteration-complexity result can be applied to analyze the convergence rate of various monotone operator splitting methods in the literature, including the Forward-Backward, the Generalized Forward-Backward, Douglas-Rachford, alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) and Primal-Dual splitting methods. For these methods, we also develop easily verifiable termination criteria for finding an approximate solution, which can be seen as a generalization of the termination criterion for the classical gradient descent method. We finally develop a parallel analysis for the non-stationary Krasnosel'skii-Mann iteration. The usefulness of our results is illustrated by applying them to a large class of structured monotone inclusion and convex optimization problems. Experiments on some large scale inverse problems in signal and image processing problems are shown.Comment: This is an extended version of the work presented in http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.6636, and is accepted by the Mathematical Programmin

Iteration-Complexity of a Generalized Forward Backward Splitting Algorithm

In this paper, we analyze the iteration-complexity of Generalized Forward--Backward (GFB) splitting algorithm, as proposed in \cite{gfb2011}, for minimizing a large class of composite objectives $f + \sum_{i=1}^n h_i$ on a Hilbert space, where $f$ has a Lipschitz-continuous gradient and the $h_i$'s are simple (\ie their proximity operators are easy to compute). We derive iteration-complexity bounds (pointwise and ergodic) for the inexact version of GFB to obtain an approximate solution based on an easily verifiable termination criterion. Along the way, we prove complexity bounds for relaxed and inexact fixed point iterations built from composition of nonexpansive averaged operators. These results apply more generally to GFB when used to find a zero of a sum of $n > 0$ maximal monotone operators and a co-coercive operator on a Hilbert space. The theoretical findings are exemplified with experiments on video processing.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure