Denoising by frame thresholding is one of the most basic and efficient
methods for recovering a discrete signal or image from data that are corrupted
by additive Gaussian white noise. The basic idea is to select a frame of
analyzing elements that separates the data in few large coefficients due to the
signal and many small coefficients mainly due to the noise \epsilon_n. Removing
all data coefficients being in magnitude below a certain threshold yields a
reconstruction of the original signal. In order to properly balance the amount
of noise to be removed and the relevant signal features to be kept, a precise
understanding of the statistical properties of thresholding is important. For
that purpose we derive the asymptotic distribution of max_{\omega \in \Omega_n}
|| for a wide class of redundant frames
(\phi_\omega^n: \omega \in \Omega_n}. Based on our theoretical results we give
a rationale for universal extreme value thresholding techniques yielding
asymptotically sharp confidence regions and smoothness estimates corresponding
to prescribed significance levels. The results cover many frames used in
imaging and signal recovery applications, such as redundant wavelet systems,
curvelet frames, or unions of bases. We show that `generically' a standard
Gumbel law results as it is known from the case of orthonormal wavelet bases.
However, for specific highly redundant frames other limiting laws may occur. We
indeed verify that the translation invariant wavelet transform shows a
different asymptotic behaviour.Comment: [Content: 39 pages, 4 figures] Note that in this version 4 we have
slightely changed the title of the paper and we have rewritten parts of the
introduction. Except for corrected typos the other parts of the paper are the
same as the original versions
