Fast Dictionary Learning for Sparse Representations of Speech Signals

© 2011 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. Published version: IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing 5(5): 1025-1031, Sep 2011. DOI: 10.1109/JSTSP.2011.2157892

Medical Image Denoising Using Mixed Transforms

يقترح في هذا البحث طريقة تعتمد على خليط من التحويلات Wavelet Transform(WT) و Multiwavelet Transform (MWT) من اجل تقليل التشوه في الصور الطبية . تعتمد الطريقة المقترحة على استخدام WT  و MWT بالتعاقب لتعزيز اداء ازالة التشوه من الصور الطبية. عمليا , يتم في البداية اضافة تشويه لصور الرنين المغناطيسي (MRI) والتصوير المقطعي المحوسب (CT)  من اجل الاختبار. ثم تعالج الصورة المشوهة بواسطة WT  لتنتج اربع تقسيمات للصورة موزعة على اساس التردد ويعالج كل تقسيم بواسطة MWT  قبل مرحلة ازالة التشوه المكثفة او البسيطة. اوضحت النتائج العملية ان نسبة الاشارة الى الضوضاء (PSNR) تحسنت بشكل ملحوظ وتم المحافظة على المعلومات الاساسية للصورة. بالاضافة الى ذلك, فان متوسط نسبة الخطا انخفض تبعا لذلك بالمقارنة مع الطرق الاخرى. In this paper,  a mixed transform method is proposed based on a combination of wavelet transform (WT) and multiwavelet transform (MWT) in order to denoise medical images. The proposed method consists of WT and MWT in cascade form to enhance the denoising performance of image processing. Practically, the first step is to add a noise to Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI) or Computed Tomography (CT) images for the sake of testing. The noisy image is processed by WT to achieve four sub-bands and each sub-band is treated individually using MWT before the soft/hard denoising stage. Simulation results show that a high peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) is improved significantly and the characteristic features are well preserved by employing mixed transform of WT and MWT due to their capability of separating noise signals from image signals. Moreover, the corresponding mean square error (MSE) is decreased accordingly compared to other available methods

Pattern Approximation Based Generalized Image Noise Reduction Using Adaptive Feedforward Neural Network

The problem of noise interference with the image always occurs irrespective of whatever precaution is taken. Challenging issues with noise reduction are diversity of characteristics involved with source of noise and in result; it is difficult to develop a universal solution. This paper has proposed neural network based generalize solution of noise reduction by mapping the problem as pattern approximation. Considering the statistical relationship among local region pixels in the noise free image as normal patterns, feedforward neural network is applied to acquire the knowledge available within such patterns. Adaptiveness is applied in the slope of transfer function to improve the learning process. Acquired normal patterns knowledge is utilized to reduce the level of different type of noise available within an image by recorrection of noisy patterns through pattern approximation. The proposed restoration method does not need any estimation of noise model characteristics available in the image not only that it can reduce the mixer of different types of noise efficiently. The proposed method has high processing speed along with simplicity in design. Restoration of gray scale image as well as color image has done, which has suffered from different types of noise like, Gaussian noise, salt &peper, speckle noise and mixer of it

Fast Dictionary Learning for Sparse Representations of Speech Signals

For dictionary-based decompositions of certain types, it has been observed that there might be a link between sparsity in the dictionary and sparsity in the decomposition. Sparsity in the dictionary has also been associated with the derivation of fast and efficient dictionary learning algorithms. Therefore, in this paper we present a greedy adaptive dictionary learning algorithm that sets out to find sparse atoms for speech signals. The algorithm learns the dictionary atoms on data frames taken from a speech signal. It iteratively extracts the data frame with minimum sparsity index, and adds this to the dictionary matrix. The contribution of this atom to the data frames is then removed, and the process is repeated. The algorithm is found to yield a sparse signal decomposition, supporting the hypothesis of a link between sparsity in the decomposition and dictionary. The algorithm is applied to the problem of speech representation and speech denoising, and its performance is compared to other existing methods

Perceptually based downscaling of images

We propose a perceptually based method for downscaling images that provides a better apparent depiction of the input image. We formulate image downscaling as an optimization problem where the difference between the input and output images is measured using a widely adopted perceptual image quality metric. The downscaled images retain perceptually important features and details, resulting in an accurate and spatio-temporally consistent representation of the high resolution input. We derive the solution of the optimization problem in closed-form, which leads to a simple, efficient and parallelizable implementation with sums and convolutions. The algorithm has running times similar to linear filtering and is orders of magnitude faster than the state-of-the-art for image downscaling. We validate the effectiveness of the technique with extensive tests on many images, video, and by performing a user study, which indicates a clear preference for the results of the new algorithm.</jats:p

A two-stage framework for optical coherence tomography angiography image quality improvement

IntroductionOptical Coherence Tomography Angiography (OCTA) is a new non-invasive imaging modality that gains increasing popularity for the observation of the microvasculatures in the retina and the conjunctiva, assisting clinical diagnosis and treatment planning. However, poor imaging quality, such as stripe artifacts and low contrast, is common in the acquired OCTA and in particular Anterior Segment OCTA (AS-OCTA) due to eye microtremor and poor illumination conditions. These issues lead to incomplete vasculature maps that in turn makes it hard to make accurate interpretation and subsequent diagnosis.MethodsIn this work, we propose a two-stage framework that comprises a de-striping stage and a re-enhancing stage, with aims to remove stripe noise and to enhance blood vessel structure from the background. We introduce a new de-striping objective function in a Stripe Removal Net (SR-Net) to suppress the stripe noise in the original image. The vasculatures in acquired AS-OCTA images usually exhibit poor contrast, so we use a Perceptual Structure Generative Adversarial Network (PS-GAN) to enhance the de-striped AS-OCTA image in the re-enhancing stage, which combined cyclic perceptual loss with structure loss to achieve further image quality improvement.Results and discussionTo evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, we apply the proposed framework to two synthetic OCTA datasets and a real AS-OCTA dataset. Our results show that the proposed framework yields a promising enhancement performance, which enables both conventional and deep learning-based vessel segmentation methods to produce improved results after enhancement of both retina and AS-OCTA modalities

A Study of the Structural Similarity Image Quality Measure with Applications to Image Processing

Since its introduction in 2004, the Structural Similarity (SSIM) index has gained widespread popularity as an image quality assessment measure. SSIM is currently recognized to be one of the most powerful methods of assessing the visual closeness of images. That being said, the Mean Squared Error (MSE), which performs very poorly from a perceptual point of view, still remains the most common optimization criterion in image processing applications because of its relative simplicity along with a number of other properties that are deemed important. In this thesis, some necessary tools to assist in the design of SSIM-optimal algorithms are developed. This work combines theoretical developments with experimental research and practical algorithms. The description of the mathematical properties of the SSIM index represents the principal theoretical achievement in this thesis. Indeed, it is demonstrated how the SSIM index can be transformed into a distance metric. Local convexity, quasi-convexity, symmetries and invariance properties are also proved. The study of the SSIM index is also generalized to a family of metrics called normalized (or M-relative) metrics. Various analytical techniques for different kinds of SSIM-based optimization are then devised. For example, the best approximation according to the SSIM is described for orthogonal and redundant basis sets. SSIM-geodesic paths with arclength parameterization are also traced between images. Finally, formulas for SSIM-optimal point estimators are obtained. On the experimental side of the research, the structural self-similarity of images is studied. This leads to the confirmation of the hypothesis that the main source of self-similarity of images lies in their regions of low variance. On the practical side, an implementation of local statistical tests on the image residual is proposed for the assessment of denoised images. Also, heuristic estimations of the SSIM index and the MSE are developed. The research performed in this thesis should lead to the development of state-of-the-art image denoising algorithms. A better comprehension of the mathematical properties of the SSIM index represents another step toward the replacement of the MSE with SSIM in image processing applications

Image Denoising Using Sparse Representations

International audienceThe problem of removing white zero-mean Gaussian noise from an image is an interesting inverse problem to be investigated in this paper through sparse and redundant representations. However, finding the sparsest possible solution in the noise scenario was of great debate among the researchers. In this paper we make use of new approach to solve this problem and show that it is comparable with the state-of-art denoising approaches