918 research outputs found
Enhancement of Single and Composite Images Based on Contourlet Transform Approach
Image enhancement is an imperative step in almost every image processing algorithms.
Numerous image enhancement algorithms have been developed for gray scale images
despite their absence in many applications lately. This thesis proposes hew image
enhancement techniques of 8-bit single and composite digital color images. Recently, it
has become evident that wavelet transforms are not necessarily best suited for images.
Therefore, the enhancement approaches are based on a new 'true' two-dimensional
transform called contourlet transform. The proposed enhancement techniques discussed
in this thesis are developed based on the understanding of the working mechanisms of the
new multiresolution property of contourlet transform. This research also investigates the
effects of using different color space representations for color image enhancement
applications. Based on this investigation an optimal color space is selected for both single
image and composite image enhancement approaches. The objective evaluation steps
show that the new method of enhancement not only superior to the commonly used
transformation method (e.g. wavelet transform) but also to various spatial models (e.g.
histogram equalizations). The results found are encouraging and the enhancement
algorithms have proved to be more robust and reliable
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
ShearLab 3D: Faithful Digital Shearlet Transforms based on Compactly Supported Shearlets
Wavelets and their associated transforms are highly efficient when
approximating and analyzing one-dimensional signals. However, multivariate
signals such as images or videos typically exhibit curvilinear singularities,
which wavelets are provably deficient of sparsely approximating and also of
analyzing in the sense of, for instance, detecting their direction. Shearlets
are a directional representation system extending the wavelet framework, which
overcomes those deficiencies. Similar to wavelets, shearlets allow a faithful
implementation and fast associated transforms. In this paper, we will introduce
a comprehensive carefully documented software package coined ShearLab 3D
(www.ShearLab.org) and discuss its algorithmic details. This package provides
MATLAB code for a novel faithful algorithmic realization of the 2D and 3D
shearlet transform (and their inverses) associated with compactly supported
universal shearlet systems incorporating the option of using CUDA. We will
present extensive numerical experiments in 2D and 3D concerning denoising,
inpainting, and feature extraction, comparing the performance of ShearLab 3D
with similar transform-based algorithms such as curvelets, contourlets, or
surfacelets. In the spirit of reproducible reseaerch, all scripts are
accessible on www.ShearLab.org.Comment: There is another shearlet software package
(http://www.mathematik.uni-kl.de/imagepro/members/haeuser/ffst/) by S.
H\"auser and G. Steidl. We will include this in a revisio
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
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