Network Flow Algorithms for Discrete Tomography

Tomography is a powerful technique to obtain images of the interior of an object in a nondestructive way. First, a series of projection images (e.g., X-ray images) is acquired and subsequently a reconstruction of the interior is computed from the available project data. The algorithms that are used to compute such reconstructions are known as tomographic reconstruction algorithms. Discrete tomography is concerned with the tomographic reconstruction of images that are known to contain only a few different gray levels. By using this knowledge in the reconstruction algorithm it is often possible to reduce the number of projections required to compute an accurate reconstruction, compared to algorithms that do not use prior knowledge. This thesis deals with new reconstruction algorithms for discrete tomography. In particular, the first five chapters are about reconstruction algorithms based on network flow methods. These algorithms make use of an elegant correspondence between certain types of tomography problems and network flow problems from the field of Operations Research. Chapter 6 deals with a problem that occurs in the application of discrete tomography to the reconstruction of nanocrystals from projections obtained by electron microscopy.The research for this thesis has been financially supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), project 613.000.112.UBL - phd migration 201

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