49 research outputs found
Recovering edges in ill-posed inverse problems: optimality of curvelet frames
We consider a model problem of recovering a function from noisy Radon data. The function to be recovered is assumed smooth apart from a discontinuity along a curve, that is, an edge. We use the continuum white-noise model, with noise level .
Traditional linear methods for solving such inverse problems behave poorly in the presence of edges. Qualitatively, the reconstructions are blurred near the edges; quantitatively, they give in our model mean squared errors (MSEs) that tend to zero with noise level only as as . A recent innovation--nonlinear shrinkage in the wavelet domain--visually improves edge sharpness and improves MSE convergence to . However, as we show here, this rate is not optimal.
In fact, essentially optimal performance is obtained by deploying the recently-introduced tight frames of curvelets in this setting. Curvelets are smooth, highly anisotropic elements ideally suited for detecting and synthesizing curved edges. To deploy them in the Radon setting, we construct a curvelet-based biorthogonal decomposition of the Radon operator and build "curvelet shrinkage" estimators based on thresholding of the noisy curvelet coefficients. In effect, the estimator detects edges at certain locations and orientations in the Radon domain and automatically synthesizes edges at corresponding locations and directions in the original domain.
We prove that the curvelet shrinkage can be tuned so that the estimator will attain, within logarithmic factors, the MSE as noise level . This rate of convergence holds uniformly over a class of functions which are except for discontinuities along curves, and (except for log terms) is the minimax rate for that class. Our approach is an instance of a general strategy which should apply in other inverse problems; we sketch a deconvolution example
Wavelets, ridgelets and curvelets on the sphere
We present in this paper new multiscale transforms on the sphere, namely the
isotropic undecimated wavelet transform, the pyramidal wavelet transform, the
ridgelet transform and the curvelet transform. All of these transforms can be
inverted i.e. we can exactly reconstruct the original data from its
coefficients in either representation. Several applications are described. We
show how these transforms can be used in denoising and especially in a Combined
Filtering Method, which uses both the wavelet and the curvelet transforms, thus
benefiting from the advantages of both transforms. An application to component
separation from multichannel data mapped to the sphere is also described in
which we take advantage of moving to a wavelet representation.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. Manuscript with all figures can be
downloaded at http://jstarck.free.fr/aa_sphere05.pd
Curvelets and Ridgelets
International audienceDespite the fact that wavelets have had a wide impact in image processing, they fail to efficiently represent objects with highly anisotropic elements such as lines or curvilinear structures (e.g. edges). The reason is that wavelets are non-geometrical and do not exploit the regularity of the edge curve. The Ridgelet and the Curvelet [3, 4] transforms were developed as an answer to the weakness of the separable wavelet transform in sparsely representing what appears to be simple building atoms in an image, that is lines, curves and edges. Curvelets and ridgelets take the form of basis elements which exhibit high directional sensitivity and are highly anisotropic [5, 6, 7, 8]. These very recent geometric image representations are built upon ideas of multiscale analysis and geometry. They have had an important success in a wide range of image processing applications including denoising [8, 9, 10], deconvolution [11, 12], contrast enhancement [13], texture analysis [14, 15], detection [16], watermarking [17], component separation [18], inpainting [19, 20] or blind source separation[21, 22]. Curvelets have also proven useful in diverse fields beyond the traditional image processing application. Let’s cite for example seismic imaging [10, 23, 24], astronomical imaging [25, 26, 27], scientific computing and analysis of partial differential equations [28, 29]. Another reason for the success of ridgelets and curvelets is the availability of fast transform algorithms which are available in non-commercial software packages following the philosophy of reproducible research, see [30, 31]
Coronal Mass Ejection Detection using Wavelets, Curvelets and Ridgelets: Applications for Space Weather Monitoring
Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are large-scale eruptions of plasma and
magnetic feld that can produce adverse space weather at Earth and other
locations in the Heliosphere. Due to the intrinsic multiscale nature of
features in coronagraph images, wavelet and multiscale image processing
techniques are well suited to enhancing the visibility of CMEs and supressing
noise. However, wavelets are better suited to identifying point-like features,
such as noise or background stars, than to enhancing the visibility of the
curved form of a typical CME front. Higher order multiscale techniques, such as
ridgelets and curvelets, were therefore explored to characterise the morphology
(width, curvature) and kinematics (position, velocity, acceleration) of CMEs.
Curvelets in particular were found to be well suited to characterising CME
properties in a self-consistent manner. Curvelets are thus likely to be of
benefit to autonomous monitoring of CME properties for space weather
applications.Comment: Accepted for publication in Advances in Space Research (3 April 2010
Second-Generation Curvelets on the Sphere
Curvelets are efficient to represent highly anisotropic signal content, such as a local linear and curvilinear structure. First-generation curvelets on the sphere, however, suffered from blocking artefacts. We present a new second-generation curvelet transform, where scale-discretized curvelets are constructed directly on the sphere. Scale-discretized curvelets exhibit a parabolic scaling relation, are well localized in both spatial and harmonic domains, support the exact analysis and synthesis of both scalar and spin signals, and are free of blocking artefacts. We present fast algorithms to compute the exact curvelet transform, reducing computational complexity from O(L5) to O(L3 log2 L) for signals band limited at L. The implementation of these algorithms is made publicly available. Finally, we present an illustrative application demonstrating the effectiveness of curvelets for representing directional curve-like features in natural spherical images
Quadtree Structured Approximation Algorithms
The success of many image restoration algorithms is often due to their ability to sparsely describe the original signal. Many sparse promoting transforms exist, including wavelets, the so called ‘lets’ family of transforms and more recent non-local learned transforms. The first part of this thesis reviews sparse approximation theory, particularly in relation to 2-D piecewise polynomial signals. We also show the connection between this theory and current state of the art algorithms that cover the following image restoration and enhancement applications: denoising, deconvolution, interpolation and multi-view super resolution.
In [63], Shukla et al. proposed a compression algorithm, based on a sparse quadtree decomposition model, which could optimally represent piecewise polynomial images. In the second part of this thesis we adapt this model to image restoration by changing the rate-distortion penalty to a description-length penalty. Moreover, one of the major drawbacks of this type of approximation is the computational complexity required to find a suitable subspace for each node of the quadtree. We address this issue by searching for a suitable subspace much more efficiently using the mathematics of updating matrix factorisations. Novel algorithms are developed to tackle the four problems previously mentioned. Simulation results indicate that we beat state of the art results when the original signal is in the model (e.g. depth images) and are competitive for natural images when the degradation is high.Open Acces
A Panorama on Multiscale Geometric Representations, Intertwining Spatial, Directional and Frequency Selectivity
The richness of natural images makes the quest for optimal representations in
image processing and computer vision challenging. The latter observation has
not prevented the design of image representations, which trade off between
efficiency and complexity, while achieving accurate rendering of smooth regions
as well as reproducing faithful contours and textures. The most recent ones,
proposed in the past decade, share an hybrid heritage highlighting the
multiscale and oriented nature of edges and patterns in images. This paper
presents a panorama of the aforementioned literature on decompositions in
multiscale, multi-orientation bases or dictionaries. They typically exhibit
redundancy to improve sparsity in the transformed domain and sometimes its
invariance with respect to simple geometric deformations (translation,
rotation). Oriented multiscale dictionaries extend traditional wavelet
processing and may offer rotation invariance. Highly redundant dictionaries
require specific algorithms to simplify the search for an efficient (sparse)
representation. We also discuss the extension of multiscale geometric
decompositions to non-Euclidean domains such as the sphere or arbitrary meshed
surfaces. The etymology of panorama suggests an overview, based on a choice of
partially overlapping "pictures". We hope that this paper will contribute to
the appreciation and apprehension of a stream of current research directions in
image understanding.Comment: 65 pages, 33 figures, 303 reference
Directional edge and texture representations for image processing
An efficient representation for natural images is of fundamental importance in image processing and analysis. The commonly used separable transforms such as wavelets axe not best suited for images due to their inability to exploit directional regularities such as edges and oriented textural patterns; while most of the recently proposed directional schemes cannot represent these two types of features in a unified transform. This thesis focuses on the development of directional representations for images which can capture both edges and textures in a multiresolution manner. The thesis first considers the problem of extracting linear features with the multiresolution Fourier transform (MFT). Based on a previous MFT-based linear feature model, the work extends the extraction method into the situation when the image is corrupted by noise. The problem is tackled by the combination of a "Signal+Noise" frequency model, a refinement stage and a robust classification scheme. As a result, the MFT is able to perform linear feature analysis on noisy images on which previous methods failed. A new set of transforms called the multiscale polar cosine transforms (MPCT) are also proposed in order to represent textures. The MPCT can be regarded as real-valued MFT with similar basis functions of oriented sinusoids. It is shown that the transform can represent textural patches more efficiently than the conventional Fourier basis. With a directional best cosine basis, the MPCT packet (MPCPT) is shown to be an efficient representation for edges and textures, despite its high computational burden. The problem of representing edges and textures in a fixed transform with less complexity is then considered. This is achieved by applying a Gaussian frequency filter, which matches the disperson of the magnitude spectrum, on the local MFT coefficients. This is particularly effective in denoising natural images, due to its ability to preserve both types of feature. Further improvements can be made by employing the information given by the linear feature extraction process in the filter's configuration. The denoising results compare favourably against other state-of-the-art directional representations
Extended object reconstruction in adaptive-optics imaging: the multiresolution approach
We propose the application of multiresolution transforms, such as wavelets
(WT) and curvelets (CT), to the reconstruction of images of extended objects
that have been acquired with adaptive optics (AO) systems. Such multichannel
approaches normally make use of probabilistic tools in order to distinguish
significant structures from noise and reconstruction residuals. Furthermore, we
aim to check the historical assumption that image-reconstruction algorithms
using static PSFs are not suitable for AO imaging. We convolve an image of
Saturn taken with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) with AO PSFs from the 5-m
Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory and add both shot and readout noise.
Subsequently, we apply different approaches to the blurred and noisy data in
order to recover the original object. The approaches include multi-frame blind
deconvolution (with the algorithm IDAC), myopic deconvolution with
regularization (with MISTRAL) and wavelets- or curvelets-based static PSF
deconvolution (AWMLE and ACMLE algorithms). We used the mean squared error
(MSE) and the structural similarity index (SSIM) to compare the results. We
discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the two metrics. We found that CT
produces better results than WT, as measured in terms of MSE and SSIM.
Multichannel deconvolution with a static PSF produces results which are
generally better than the results obtained with the myopic/blind approaches
(for the images we tested) thus showing that the ability of a method to
suppress the noise and to track the underlying iterative process is just as
critical as the capability of the myopic/blind approaches to update the PSF.Comment: In revision in Astronomy & Astrophysics. 19 pages, 13 figure