On Kernel Selection of Multivariate Local Polynomial Modelling and its Application to Image Smoothing and Reconstruction

This paper studies the problem of adaptive kernel selection for multivariate local polynomial regression (LPR) and its application to smoothing and reconstruction of noisy images. In multivariate LPR, the multidimensional signals are modeled locally by a polynomial using least-squares (LS) criterion with a kernel controlled by a certain bandwidth matrix. Based on the traditional intersection confidence intervals (ICI) method, a new refined ICI (RICI) adaptive scale selector for symmetric kernel is developed to achieve a better bias-variance tradeoff. The method is further extended to steering kernel with local orientation to adapt better to local characteristics of multidimensional signals. The resulting multivariate LPR method called the steering-kernel-based LPR with refined ICI method (SK-LPR-RICI) is applied to the smoothing and reconstruction problems in noisy images. Simulation results show that the proposed SK-LPR-RICI method has a better PSNR and visual performance than conventional LPR-based methods in image processing. © 2010 The Author(s).published_or_final_versio

Steered mixture-of-experts for light field images and video : representation and coding

Research in light field (LF) processing has heavily increased over the last decade. This is largely driven by the desire to achieve the same level of immersion and navigational freedom for camera-captured scenes as it is currently available for CGI content. Standardization organizations such as MPEG and JPEG continue to follow conventional coding paradigms in which viewpoints are discretely represented on 2-D regular grids. These grids are then further decorrelated through hybrid DPCM/transform techniques. However, these 2-D regular grids are less suited for high-dimensional data, such as LFs. We propose a novel coding framework for higher-dimensional image modalities, called Steered Mixture-of-Experts (SMoE). Coherent areas in the higher-dimensional space are represented by single higher-dimensional entities, called kernels. These kernels hold spatially localized information about light rays at any angle arriving at a certain region. The global model consists thus of a set of kernels which define a continuous approximation of the underlying plenoptic function. We introduce the theory of SMoE and illustrate its application for 2-D images, 4-D LF images, and 5-D LF video. We also propose an efficient coding strategy to convert the model parameters into a bitstream. Even without provisions for high-frequency information, the proposed method performs comparable to the state of the art for low-to-mid range bitrates with respect to subjective visual quality of 4-D LF images. In case of 5-D LF video, we observe superior decorrelation and coding performance with coding gains of a factor of 4x in bitrate for the same quality. At least equally important is the fact that our method inherently has desired functionality for LF rendering which is lacking in other state-of-the-art techniques: (1) full zero-delay random access, (2) light-weight pixel-parallel view reconstruction, and (3) intrinsic view interpolation and super-resolution

Single image example-based super-resolution using cross-scale patch matching and Markov random field modelling

Example-based super-resolution has become increasingly popular over the last few years for its ability to overcome the limitations of classical multi-frame approach. In this paper we present a new example-based method that uses the input low-resolution image itself as a search space for high-resolution patches by exploiting self-similarity across different resolution scales. Found examples are combined in a high-resolution image by the means of Markov Random Field modelling that forces their global agreement. Additionally, we apply back-projection and steering kernel regression as post-processing techniques. In this way, we are able to produce sharp and artefact-free results that are comparable or better than standard interpolation and state-of-the-art super-resolution techniques