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Images are conventionally sampled on a rectangular lattice. Thus, traditional image processing is carried out on the rectangular lattice. The hexagonal lattice was proposed more than four decades ago as an alternative method for sampling. Compared with the rectangular lattice, the hexagonal lattice has certain advantages which include that it needs less sampling points; it has better consistent connectivity and higher symmetry; the hexagonal structure is also pertinent to the vision process. In this paper, we investigate the construction of symmetric FIR hexagonal filter banks for multiresolution hexagonal image processing. We obtain block structures of FIR hexagonal filter banks with 3-fold rotational symmetry and 3-fold axial symmetry. These block structures yield families of orthogonal and biorthogonal FIR hexagonal filter banks with 3-fold rotational symmetry and 3-fold axial symmetry. In this paper, we also discuss the construction of orthogonal and biorthogonal FIR filter banks with scaling functions and wavelets having optimal smoothness. In addition, we present a few of such orthogonal and biorthogonal FIR filters banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sparse representations of signals have drawn considerable interest in recent years. The assumption that natural signals, such as images, admit a sparse decomposition over a redundant dictionary leads to efficient algorithms for handling such sources of data. In particular, the design of well adapted dictionaries for images has been a major challenge. The K-SVD has been recently proposed for this task [1] and shown to perform very well for various grayscale image processing tasks. In this paper, we address the problem of learning dictionaries for color images and extend the K-SVD-based grayscale image denoising algorithm that appears in [21. This work puts forward ways for handling nonhomogeneous noise and missing information, paving the way to state-of-the-art results in applications such as color image denoising, demosaicing, and inpainting, as demonstrated in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Snakes, or active contours, have been widely used in image processing applications. Typical roadblocks to consistent performance include limited capture range, noise sensitivity, and poor convergence to concavities. This paper proposes a new external force for active contours, called vector field convolution (VFC), to address these problems. VFC is calculated by convolving the edge map generated from the image with the user-defined vector field kernel. We propose two structures for the magnitude function of the vector field kernel, and we provide an analytical method to estimate the parameter of the magnitude function. Mixed VFC is introduced to alleviate the possible leakage problem caused by choosing inappropriate parameters. We also demonstrate that the standard external force and the gradient vector flow (GVF) external force are special cases of VFC in certain scenarios. Examples and comparisons with GVF are presented in this paper to show the advantages of this innovation, including superior noise robustness, reduced computational cost, and the flexibility of tailoring the force field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A popular way to restore images comprising edges is to minimize a cost function combining a quadratic data-fidelity term and an edge-preserving (possibly nonconvex) regularization term. Mainly because of the latter term, the calculation of the solution is slow and cumbersome. Half-quadratic (HQ) minimization (multiplicative form) was pioneered by Geman and Reynolds (1992) in order to alleviate the computational task in the context of image reconstruction with nonconvex regularization. By promoting the idea of locally homogeneous image models with a continuous-valued line process, they reformulated the optimization problem in terms of an augmented cost function which is quadratic with respect to the image and separable with respect to the line process, hence the name "half quadratic." Since then, a large amount of papers were dedicated to HQ minimization and important results—including edge-preservation along with convex regularization and convergence—have been obtained. In this paper, we show that HQ minimization (multiplicative form) is equivalent to the most simple and basic method where the gradient of the cost function is linearized at each iteration step. In fact, both methods give exactly the same iterations. Furthermore, connections of HQ minimization with other methods, such as the quasi-Newton method and the generalized Weiszfeld's method, are straightforward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Fourier transform is one of the most important transformations in image processing. A major component of this influence comes from the ability to implement it efficiently on a digital computer. This paper describes a new methodology to perform a fast Fourier transform (FFT). This methodology emerges from considerations of the natural physical constraints imposed by image capture devices (camera/eye). The novel aspects of the specific FFT method described include: 1) a bit-wise reversal re-grouping operation of the conventional FFT is replaced by the use of lossless image rotation and scaling and 2) the usual arithmetic operations of complex multiplication are replaced with integer addition. The significance of the FFT presented in this paper is introduced by extending a discrete and finite image algebra, named Spiral Honeycomb image Algebra (SHIA), to a continuous version, named SHIAC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shape-adaptive discrete cosine transform (SA-DCT) transform can be computed on a support of arbitrary shape, but retains a computational complexity comparable to that of the usual separable block-DCT (B-DCT). Despite the near-optimal decorrelation and energy compaction properties, application of the SA-DCT has been rather limited, targeted nearly exclusively to video compression. In this paper, we present a novel approach to image filtering based on the SA-DCT. We use the SA-DCT in conjunction with the Anisotropic Local Polynomial Approximation—Intersection of Confidence Intervals technique, which defines the shape of the transform's support in a pointwise adaptive manner. The thresholded or attenuated SA-DCT coefficients are used to reconstruct a local estimate of the signal within the adaptive-shape support. Since supports corresponding to different points are in general overlapping, the local estimates are averaged together using adaptive weights that depend on the region's statistics. This approach can be used for various image-processing tasks. In this paper, we consider, in particular, image denoising and image deblocking and deringing from block-DCT compression. A special structural constraint in luminance-chrominance space is also proposed to enable an accurate filtering of color images. Simulation experiments show a state-of-the-art quality of the final estimate, both in terms of objective criteria and visual appearance. Thanks to the adaptive support, reconstructed edges are clean, and no unpleasant ringing artifacts are introduced by the fitted transform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measurement of visual quality is of fundamental importance for numerous image and video processing applications, where the goal of quality assessment (QA) algorithms is to automatically assess the quality of images or videos in agreement with human quality judgments. Over the years, many researchers have taken different approaches to the problem and have contributed significant research in this area and claim to have made progress in their respective domains. It is important to evaluate the performance of these algorithms in a comparative setting and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of these methods. In this paper, we present results of an extensive subjective quality assessment study in which a total of 779 distorted images were evaluated by about two dozen human subjects. The "ground truth" image quality data obtained from about 25000 individual human quality judgments is used to evaluate the performance of several prominent full-reference image quality assessment algorithms. To the best of our knowledge, apart from video quality studies conducted by the Video Quality Experts Group, the study presented in this paper is the largest subjective image quality study in the literature in terms of number of images, distortion types, and number of human judgments per image. Moreover, we have made the data from the study freely available to the research community [1]. This would allow other researchers to easily report comparative results in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrast enhancement has an important role in image processing applications. Conventional contrast enhancement techniques either often fail to produce satisfactory results for a broad variety of low-contrast images, or cannot be automatically applied to different images, because their parameters must be specified manually to produce a satisfactory result for a given image. This paper describes a new automatic method for contrast enhancement. The basic procedure is to first group the histogram components of a low-contrast image into a proper number of bins according to a selected criterion, then redistribute these bins uniformly over the grayscale, and finally ungroup the previously grouped gray-levels. Accordingly, this new technique is named gray-level grouping (GLG). GLG not only produces results superior to conventional contrast enhancement techniques, but is also fully automatic in most circumstances, and is applicable to a broad variety of images. An extension of GLG, selective GLG (SGLG), and its variations will be discussed in Part II of this paper. SGLG selectively groups and ungroups histogram components to achieve specific application purposes, such as eliminating background noise, enhancing a specific segment of the histogram, and so on. The extension of GLG to color images will also be discussed in Part II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new approach to represent an image by "verge points," which are defined as high-curvature points on the image surface. This representation offers a compact and reversible way to preserve the essence of the original image. Various applications, such as compression, edge detection, image enhancement, and image editing, can be achieved based on this representation. In this paper, the whole procedure for verge point representation is presented. Based on these verge points, image reconstruction can be easily achieved via iterative linear interpolation. These extracted verge points with compatible properties are further linked into verge curves to offer more compact representation. Progressive representation is also developed based on a multiscale extraction scheme. Some potential applications are then presented to demonstrate the versatility of this representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances a new framework for chromatic filtering of color images. The chromatic content of a color image is encoded in the CIE u' v' chromaticity coordinates whereas the achromatic content is encoded as CIE Y tristimulus value. Within the u' v' chromaticity diagram, colors are added according to the well-known center of gravity law of additive color mixtures, which is generalized here into a nonlinear filtering scheme for processing the two chromatic signals u' and v'. The achromatic channel Y can be processed with traditional filtering schemes, either linear or nonlinear, depending on the specific task at hand. The most interesting characteristics of the new filtering scheme are: 1) the elimination of color smearing effects along edges between bright and dark areas; 2) the possibility of processing chromatic components in a noniterative fashion through linear convolution operations; and 3) the consequent amenability to computationailly efficient implementations with fast Fourier transform. The paper includes several examples with both synthetic and real images where the performance of the new filtering method is compared with that of other color image processing algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wavelet shrinkage estimators, in general, make the additive normal noise assumption and disregard the nonlinear nature of contamination. In this paper, we develop Bayesian wavelet shrinkage estimators (based on the power transformations in the Linear model) to accommodate a broad class of noise models in image processing applications. We intend to admit under one roof, the widespread additive model, the product models common in imaging (such as in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery), as well as noise that may exist amid these two extremes. Tactful prior elicitation in this model, such as the simultaneous assignment of mixture priors for wavelet coefficients and the transformation, imparts flexibility and ample insight into the underlying structure. The model permits estimation with unknown noise structure for reasonably unimodal and well-behaved (on the tails) distributions, wherein it can outperform common shrinkage estimators. Extensions with multiple transformations and Markov Random Field priors are also considered, for adaptation to local variations in contamination. Modern Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) Bayesian computation has been used for simulations and several examples are reported in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advocates a novel multiscale, structure-sensitive saliency detection method, which can distinguish multilevel, reliable saliency from various natural pictures in a robust and versatile way. One key challenge for saliency detection is to guarantee the entire salient object being characterized differently from nonsalient background. To tackle this, our strategy is to design a structure-aware descriptor based on the intrinsic biharmonic distance metric. One benefit of introducing this descriptor is its ability to simultaneously integrate local and global structure information, which is extremely valuable for separating the salient object from nonsalient background in a multiscale sense. Upon devising such powerful shape descriptor, the remaining challenge is to capture the saliency to make sure that salient subparts actually stand out among all possible candidates. Toward this goal, we conduct multilevel low-rank and sparse analysis in the intrinsic feature space spanned by the shape descriptors defined on over-segmented super-pixels. Since the low-rank property emphasizes much more on stronger similarities among super-pixels, we naturally obtain a scale space along the rank dimension in this way. Multiscale saliency can be obtained by simply computing differences among the low-rank components across the rank scale. We conduct extensive experiments on some public benchmarks, and make comprehensive, quantitative evaluation between our method and existing state-of-the-art techniques. All the results demonstrate the superiority of our method in accuracy, reliability, robustness, and versatility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to exponential growth in image sizes, visually lossless coding is increasingly being considered as an alternative to numerically lossless coding, which has limited compression ratios. This paper presents a method of encoding color images in a visually lossless manner using JPEG2000. In order to hide coding artifacts caused by quantization, visibility thresholds (VTs) are measured and used for quantization of subband signals in JPEG2000. The VTs are experimentally determined from statistically modeled quantization distortion, which is based on the distribution of wavelet coefficients and the dead-zone quantizer of JPEG2000. The resulting VTs are adjusted for locally changing backgrounds through a visual masking model, and then used to determine the minimum number of coding passes to be included in the final codestream for visually lossless quality under the desired viewing conditions. Codestreams produced by this scheme are fully JPEG2000 Part-I compliant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, there has been significant interest in robust fractal image coding for the purpose of robustness against outliers. However, the known robust fractal coding methods (HFIC and LAD-FIC, etc.) are not optimal, since, besides the high computational cost, they use the corrupted domain block as the independent variable in the robust regression model, which may adversely affect the robust estimator to calculate the fractal parameters (depending on the noise level). This paper presents a Huber fitting plane-based fractal image coding (HFPFIC) method. This method builds Huber fitting planes (HFPs) for the domain and range blocks, respectively, ensuring the use of an uncorrupted independent variable in the robust model. On this basis, a new matching error function is introduced to robustly evaluate the best scaling factor. Meanwhile, a median absolute deviation (MAD) about the median decomposition criterion is proposed to achieve fast adaptive quadtree partitioning for the image corrupted by salt & pepper noise. In order to reduce computational cost, the no-search method is applied to speedup the encoding process. Experimental results show that the proposed HFPFIC can yield superior performance over conventional robust fractal image coding methods in encoding speed and the quality of the restored image. Furthermore, the no-search method can significantly reduce encoding time and achieve less than 2.0 s for the HFPFIC with acceptable image quality degradation. In addition, we show that, combined with the MAD decomposition scheme, the HFP technique used as a robust method can further reduce the encoding time while maintaining image quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective image quality assessment (IQA) aims to evaluate image quality consistently with human perception. Most of the existing perceptual IQA metrics cannot accurately represent the degradations from different types of distortion, e.g., existing structural similarity metrics perform well on content-dependent distortions while not as well as peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) on content-independent distortions. In this paper, we integrate the merits of the existing IQA metrics with the guide of the recently revealed internal generative mechanism (IGM). The IGM indicates that the human visual system actively predicts sensory information and tries to avoid residual uncertainty for image perception and understanding. Inspired by the IGM theory, we adopt an autoregressive prediction algorithm to decompose an input scene into two portions, the predicted portion with the predicted visual content and the disorderly portion with the residual content. Distortions on the predicted portion degrade the primary visual information, and structural similarity procedures are employed to measure its degradation; distortions on the disorderly portion mainly change the uncertain information and the PNSR is employed for it. Finally, according to the noise energy deployment on the two portions, we combine the two evaluation results to acquire the overall quality score. Experimental results on six publicly available databases demonstrate that the proposed metric is comparable with the state-of-the-art quality metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The problem of image classification has aroused considerable research interest in the field of image processing. Traditional methods often convert an image to a vector and then use a vector-based classifier. In this paper, a novel multiple rank regression model (MRR) for matrix data classification is proposed. Unlike traditional vector-based methods, we employ multiple-rank left projecting vectors and right projecting vectors to regress each matrix data set to its label for each category. The convergence behavior, initialization, computational complexity, and parameter determination are also analyzed. Compared with vector-based regression methods, MRR achieves higher accuracy and has lower computational complexity. Compared with traditional supervised tensor-based methods, MRR performs better for matrix data classification. Promising experimental results on face, object, and hand-written digit image classification tasks are provided to show the effectiveness of our method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a novel approach for performing high-quality edge-preserving image filtering. Based on a local linear model and using the principle of Stein's unbiased risk estimate as an estimator for the mean squared error from the noisy image only, we derive a simple explicit image filter which can filter out noise while preserving edges and fine-scale details. Moreover, this filter has a fast and exact linear-time algorithm whose computational complexity is independent of the filtering kernel size; thus, it can be applied to real time image processing tasks. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the new filter for various computer vision applications, including noise reduction, detail smoothing and enhancement, high dynamic range compression, and flash/no-flash denoising. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a novel reaction-diffusion (RD) method for implicit active contours that is completely free of the costly reinitialization procedure in level set evolution (LSE). A diffusion term is introduced into LSE, resulting in an RD-LSE equation, from which a piecewise constant solution can be derived. In order to obtain a stable numerical solution from the RD-based LSE, we propose a two-step splitting method to iteratively solve the RD-LSE equation, where we first iterate the LSE equation, then solve the diffusion equation. The second step regularizes the level set function obtained in the first step to ensure stability, and thus the complex and costly reinitialization procedure is completely eliminated from LSE. By successfully applying diffusion to LSE, the RD-LSE model is stable by means of the simple finite difference method, which is very easy to implement. The proposed RD method can be generalized to solve the LSE for both variational level set method and partial differential equation-based level set method. The RD-LSE method shows very good performance on boundary antileakage. The extensive and promising experimental results on synthetic and real images validate the effectiveness of the proposed RD-LSE approach. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we propose a new texture descriptor for both static and dynamic textures. The new descriptor is built on the wavelet-based spatial-frequency analysis of two complementary wavelet pyramids: standard multiscale and wavelet leader. These wavelet pyramids essentially capture the local texture responses in multiple high-pass channels in a multiscale and multiorientation fashion, in which there exists a strong power-law relationship for natural images. Such a power-law relationship is characterized by the so-called multifractal analysis. In addition, two more techniques, scale normalization and multiorientation image averaging, are introduced to further improve the robustness of the proposed descriptor. Combining these techniques, the proposed descriptor enjoys both high discriminative power and robustness against many environmental changes. We apply the descriptor for classifying both static and dynamic textures. Our method has demonstrated excellent performance in comparison with the state-of-the-art approaches in several public benchmark datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper adapts the least-squares luma-chroma demultiplexing (LSLCD) demosaicking method to noisy Bayer color filter array (CFA) images. A model is presented for the noise in white-balanced gamma-corrected CFA images. A method to estimate the noise level in each of the red, green, and blue color channels is then developed. Based on the estimated noise parameters, one of a finite set of configurations adapted to a particular level of noise is selected to demosaic the noisy data. The noise-adaptive demosaicking scheme is called LSLCD with noise estimation (LSLCD-NE). Experimental results demonstrate state-of-the-art performance over a wide range of noise levels, with low computational complexity. Many results with several algorithms, noise levels, and images are presented on our companion web site along with software to allow reproduction of our results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Albedo estimation from a facial image is crucial for various computer vision tasks, such as 3-D morphable-model fitting, shape recovery, and illumination-invariant face recognition, but the currently available methods do not give good estimation results. Most methods ignore the influence of cast shadows and require a statistical model to obtain facial albedo. This paper describes a method for albedo estimation that makes combined use of image intensity and facial depth information for an image with cast shadows and general unknown light. In order to estimate the albedo map of a face, we formulate the albedo estimation problem as a linear programming problem that minimizes intensity error under the assumption that the surface of the face has constant albedo. Since the solution thus obtained has significant errors in certain parts of the facial image, the albedo estimate needs to be compensated. We minimize the mean square error of albedo under the assumption that the surface normals, which are calculated from the facial depth information, are corrupted with noise. The proposed method is simple and the experimental results show that this method gives better estimates than other methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A dynamic texture (DT) is an extension of the texture to the temporal domain. How to segment a DT is a challenging problem. In this paper, we address the problem of segmenting a DT into disjoint regions. A DT might be different from its spatial mode (i.e., appearance) and/or temporal mode (i.e., motion field). To this end, we develop a framework based on the appearance and motion modes. For the appearance mode, we use a new local spatial texture descriptor to describe the spatial mode of the DT; for the motion mode, we use the optical flow and the local temporal texture descriptor to represent the temporal variations of the DT. In addition, for the optical flow, we use the histogram of oriented optical flow (HOOF) to organize them. To compute the distance between two HOOFs, we develop a simple effective and efficient distance measure based on Weber's law. Furthermore, we also address the problem of threshold selection by proposing a method for determining thresholds for the segmentation method by an offline supervised statistical learning. The experimental results show that our method provides very good segmentation results compared to the state-of-the-art methods in segmenting regions that differ in their dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, a new fuzzy filter for the removal of random impulse noise in color video is presented. By working with different successive filtering steps, a very good tradeoff between detail preservation and noise removal is obtained. One strong filtering step that should remove all noise at once would inevitably also remove a considerable amount of detail. Therefore, the noise is filtered step by step. In each step, noisy pixels are detected by the help of fuzzy rules, which are very useful for the processing of human knowledge where linguistic variables are used. Pixels that are detected as noisy are filtered, the others remain unchanged. Filtering of detected pixels is done by blockmatching based on a noise adaptive mean absolute difference. The experiments show that the proposed method outperforms other state-of-the-art filters both visually and in terms of objective quality measures such as the mean absolute error (MAE), the peak-signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and the normalized color difference (NCD). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Level set methods have been widely used in image processing and computer vision. In conventional level set formulations, the level set function typically develops irregularities during its evolution, which may cause numerical errors and eventually destroy the stability of the evolution. Therefore, a numerical remedy, called reinitialization, is typically applied to periodically replace the degraded level set function with a signed distance function. However, the practice of reinitialization not only raises serious problems as when and how it should be performed, but also affects numerical accuracy in an undesirable way. This paper proposes a new variational level set formulation in which the regularity of the level set function is intrinsically maintained during the level set evolution. The level set evolution is derived as the gradient flow that minimizes an energy functional with a distance regularization term and an external energy that drives the motion of the zero level set toward desired locations. The distance regularization term is defined with a potential function such that the derived level set evolution has a unique forward-and-backward (FAB) diffusion effect, which is able to maintain a desired shape of the level set function, particularly a signed distance profile near the zero level set. This yields a new type of level set evolution called distance regularized level set evolution (DRLSE). The distance regularization effect eliminates the need for reinitialization and thereby avoids its induced numerical errors. In contrast to complicated implementations of conventional level set formulations, a simpler and more efficient finite difference scheme can be used to implement the DRLSE formulation. DRLSE also allows the use of more general and efficient initialization of the level set function. In its numerical implementation, relatively large time steps can be used in the finite difference scheme to reduce the number of iterations, while ensuring sufficient numerical accuracy. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the DRLSE formulation, we apply it to an edge-based active contour model for image segmentation, and provide a simple narrowband implementation to greatly reduce computational cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software realizations of computationally-demanding image processing tasks (e.g., image transforms and convolution) do not currently provide graceful degradation when their clock-cycles budgets are reduced, e.g., when delay deadlines are imposed in a multitasking environment to meet throughput requirements. This is an important obstacle in the quest for full utilization of modern programmable platforms' capabilities since worst-case considerations must be in place for reasonable quality of results. In this paper, we propose (and make available online) platform-independent software designs performing bitplane-based computation combined with an incremental packing framework in order to realize block transforms, 2-D convolution and frame-by-frame block matching. The proposed framework realizes incremental computation: progressive processing of input-source increments improves the output quality monotonically. Comparisons with the equivalent nonincremental software realization of each algorithm reveal that, for the same precision of the result, the proposed approach can lead to comparable or faster execution, while it can be arbitrarily terminated and provide the result up to the computed precision. Application examples with region-of-interest based incremental computation, task scheduling per frame, and energy-distortion scalability verify that our proposal provides significant performance scalability with graceful degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distance between a straight line and a straight line segment in the image space is proposed in this paper. Based on this distance, the neighborhood of a straight line segment is defined and mapped into the parameter space to obtain the parameter space neighborhood of the straight line segment. The neighborhood mapping between the image space and parameter space is a one to one reversible map. The mapped region in the parameter space is analytically derived and it is proved that it can be effi- ciently approximated by a quadrangle. The proposed straight line segment neighborhood technique for the HT outperforms conventional straight line neighborhood methods currently used with existing HT variations. In contrast to the straight line neighborhoods used in existing HT variations, the proposed straight line segment neighborhood has several advantages including: 1) the detection error of the proposed neighborhood is not affected by the length of the straight line segments; 2) a precision requirement in the image space described using the proposed distance can be explicitly resolved using the proposed formulation; 3) the proposed neighborhood has the ability to distinguish between segments belonging to the same straight line. A variety of experiments are executed to demonstrate that the proposed neighborhood has a variety of interesting properties of high practical value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a total variation (TV) based approach is proposed for pixel-level fusion to fuse images acquired using multiple sensors. In this approach, fusion is posed as an inverse problem and a locally affine model is used as the forward model. A TV seminorm based approach in conjunction with principal component analysis is used iteratively to estimate the fused image. The feasibility of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated on images from computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as well as visible-band and infrared sensors. The results clearly indicate the feasibility of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an adaptable content-based image retrieval (CBIR) system developed using regularization theory, kernel-based machines, and Fisher information measure. The system consists of a retrieval subsystem that carries out similarity matching using image-dependant information, multiple mapping subsystems that adaptively modify the similarity measures, and a relevance feedback mechanism that incorporates user information. The adaptation process drives the retrieval error to zero in order to exactly meet either an existing multiclass classification model or the user high-level concepts using reference-model or relevance feedback learning, respectively. To facilitate the selection of the most informative query images during relevance feedback learning a new method based upon the Fisher information is introduced. Model-reference and relevance feedback learning mechanisms are thoroughly tested on a domain-specific image database that encompasses a wide range of underwater objects captured using an electro-optical sensor. Benchmarking results with two other relevance feedback learning methods a e also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In image processing, segmentation algorithms constitute one of the main focuses of research. In this paper, new image segmentation algorithms based on a hard version of the information bottleneck method are presented. The objective of this method is to extract a compact representation of a variable, considered the input, with minimal loss of mutual information with respect to another variable, considered the output. First, we introduce a split-and-merge algorithm based on the definition of an information channel between a set of regions (input) of the image and the intensity histogram bins (output). From this channel, the maximization of the mutual information gain is used to optimize the image partitioning. Then, the merging process of the regions obtained in the previous phase is carried out by minimizing the loss of mutual information. From the inversion of the above channel, we also present a new histogram clustering algorithm based on the minimization of the mutual information loss, where now the input variable represents the histogram bins and the output is given by the set of regions obtained from the above split-and-merge algorithm. Finally, we introduce two new clustering algorithms which show how the information bottleneck method can be applied to the registration channel obtained when two multimodal images are correctly aligned. Different experiments on 2-D and 3-D images show the behavior of the proposed algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an interactive algorithm for segmentation of natural images. The task is formulated as a problem of spline regression, in which the spline is derived in Sobolev space and has a form of a combination of linear and Green's functions. Besides its nonlinear representation capability, one advantage of this spline in usage is that, once it has been constructed, no parameters need to be tuned to data. We define this spline on the user specified foreground and background pixels, and solve its parameters (the combination coefficients of functions) from a group of linear equations. To speed up spline construction, K-means clustering algorithm is employed to cluster the user specified pixels. By taking the cluster centers as representatives, this spline can be easily constructed. The foreground object is finally cut out from its background via spline interpolation. The computational complexity of the proposed algorithm is linear in the number of the pixels to be segmented. Experiments on diverse natural images, with comparison to existing algorithms, illustrate the validity of our method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labeling objects in images plays a crucial role in many visual learning and recognition applications that need training data, such as image retrieval, object detection and recognition. Manually creating object labels in images is time consuming and, thus, becomes impossible for labeling a large image dataset. In this paper, we present a family of semi-automatic methods based on a graph-based semi-supervised learning algorithm for labeling objects in images. We first present SmartLabel that proposes to label images with reduced human input by iteratively computing the harmonic solutions to minimize a quadratic energy function on the Gaussian fields. SmartLabel tackles the problem of lacking negative data in the learning by embedding relevance feedback after the first iteration, which also leads to one limitation of SmartLabel—needing additional human supervision. To overcome the limitation and enhance SmartLabel, we propose SmartLabel-2 that utilizes a novel scheme to sample negative examples automatically, replace regular patch partitioning in SmartLabel by quadtree partitioning and applies image over-segmentation (superpixels) to extract smooth object contours. Evaluation on six diverse object categories have indicated that SmartLabel-2 can achieve promising results with a small amount of labeled data (e.g., 1 %-5 % of image size) and obtain close-to-fine extraction of object contours on different kinds of objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of image segmentation, most level-set-based active-contour approaches take advantage of a discrete representation of the associated implicit function. We present in this paper a different formulation where the implicit function is modeled as a continuous parametric function expressed on a B-spline basis. Starting from the active-contour energy functional, we show that this formulation allows us to compute the solution as a restriction of the variational problem on the space spanned by the B-splines. As a consequence, the minimization of the functional is directly obtained in terms of the B-spline coefficients. We also show that each step of this minimization may be expressed through a convolution operation. Because the B-spline functions are separable, this convolution may in turn be performed as a sequence of simple 1-D convolutions, which yields an efficient algorithm. As a further consequence, each step of the level-set evolution may be interpreted as a filtering operation with a B-spline kernel. Such filtering induces an intrinsic smoothing in the algorithm, which can be controlled explicitly via the degree and the scale of the chosen B-spline kernel. We illustrate the behavior of this approach on simulated as well as experimental images from various fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The logarithmic image processing (LIP) model is a mathematical theory that provides new operations for image processing. The contrast definition has been shown to be consistent with some important physical laws and characteristics of human visual system. In this paper, we establish an information-theoretic interpretation of the contrast definition. We show that it can be expressed as a combination of the relative entropy and Shannon's information content. Based on this new interpretation, we propose an adaptive algorithm for enhancing the contrast and sharpness of noisy images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose in this paper to perform mathematical morphology operators in a geometric transformation of an image. As a result of this procedure, processing images with regular structuring elements in the transformed domain is equivalent to working with deformed structuring elements in the original representation. More specifically, the conversion into polar-logarithmic coordinates provides satisfying results in image analysis applied to round objects, if they are roughly origin-centered. We have illustrated the interest of the derived cyclic morphology with two pattern recognition examples: erythrocyte shape analysis and multiscale description of iris textures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel approach to extract image features for texture classification. The proposed features are robust to image rotation, less sensitive to histogram equalization and noise. It comprises of two sets of features: dominant local binary patterns (DLBP) in a texture image and the supplementary features extracted by using the circularly symmetric Gabor filter responses. The dominant local binary pattern method makes use of the most frequently occurred patterns to capture descriptive textural information, while the Gabor-based features aim at supplying additional global textural information to the DLBP features. Through experiments, the proposed approach has been intensively evaluated by applying a large number of classification tests to histogram-equalized, randomly rotated and noise corrupted images in Outex, Brodatz, Meastex, and CUReT texture image databases. Our method has also been compared with six published texture features in the experiments. It is experimentally demonstrated that the proposed method achieves the highest classification accuracy in various texture databases and image conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present two related multigrid algorithms for multiphase image segmentation. Algorithm I solves the model by Vese-Chan. We first generalize our recently developed multigrid method to this multiphase segmentation model (MG1); we also give a local Fourier analysis for the local smoother which leads to a new and more effective smoother. Although MG1 is found many magnitudes faster than the fast method of additive operator splitting (AOS), both algorithms are not robust with regard to the initial guess. To overcome this dependence on the initial guess, we consider a hierarchical segmentation model which achieves multiphase segmentation by repeated use of the Chan-Vese two-phase model; our Algorithm II solves this model by a multigrid algorithm (MG2). Numerical experiments show that both algorithms are efficient and in particular MG2 is more robust than MG1 with respect to initial guesses. AMS subject classifications: 68U10, 65F10, 65K10. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent literature, there exist many high-performance wavelet coders that use different spatially adaptive coding techniques in order to exploit the spatial energy compaction property of the wavelet transform. Two crucial issues in adaptive methods are the level of flexibility and the coding efficiency achieved while modeling different image regions and allocating bitrate within the wavelet subbands. In this paper, we introduce the "spherical coder," which provides a new adaptive framework for handling these issues in a simple and effective manner. The coder uses local energy as a direct measure to differentiate between parts of the wavelet subband and to decide how to allocate the available bitrate. As local energy becomes available at finer resolutions, i.e., in smaller size windows, the coder automatically updates its decisions about how to spend the bitrate. We use a hierarchical set of variables to specify and code the local energy up to the highest resolution, i.e., the energy of individual wavelet coefficients. The overall scheme is nonredundant, meaning that the subband information is conveyed using this equivalent set of variables without the need for any side parameters. Despite its simplicity, the algorithm produces PSNR results that are competitive with the state-of-art coders in literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that the wavelet transform provides a very effective framework for analysis of multiscale edges. In this paper, we propose a novel approach based on the shearlet transform: a multiscale directional transform with a greater ability to localize distributed discontinuities such as edges. Indeed, unlike traditional wavelets, shearlets are theoretically optimal in representing images with edges and, in particular, have the ability to fully capture directional and other geometrical features. Numerical examples demonstrate that the shearlet approach is highly effective at detecting both the location and orientation of edges, and outperforms methods based on wavelets as well as other standard methods. Furthermore, the shearlet approach is useful to design simple and effective algorithms for the detection of corners and junctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the fastest methods of localizing edges in images is based on small gradient kernels, such as Sobel, Prewitt, and Roberts. Although small gradient kernels provide a fast way of computing the gradients, they have little control over noise, edge location, and edge orientation. They are known to be only sensitive to step edges and fail to detect smooth boundaries, On the other hand, large kernels provide superior noise suppression characteristics, but they suffer from wide response area around edges. They cause edges of neighboring objects to merge due to their wide support. Problems associated with large gradient kernels prevent their widespread usage. This paper presents a fuzzy topology-based method to facilitate the use of larger gradient kernels. The new method effectively limits the response area around the edge and prevents neighboring objects to affect each other. Synthetic images are used to show the superior noise suppression properties and response characteristics to both step and ramp edges. Natural images are also used to assess the performance of the newly proposed topological gradient estimation qualitatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we address the problems of unreliable motion vectors that cause visual artifacts but cannot be detected by high residual energy or bidirectional prediction difference in motion-compensated frame interpolation. A correlation-based motion vector processing method is proposed to detect and correct those unreliable motion vectors by explicitly considering motion vector correlation in the motion vector reliability classification, motion vector correction, and frame interpolation stages. Since our method gradually corrects unreliable motion vectors based on their reliability, we can effectively discover the areas where no motion is reliable to be used, such as occlusions and deformed structures. We also propose an adaptive frame interpolation scheme for the occlusion areas based on the analysis of their surrounding motion distribution. As a result, the interpolated frames using the proposed scheme have clearer structure edges and ghost artifacts are also greatly reduced. Experimental results show that our interpolated results have better visual quality than other methods. In addition, the proposed scheme is robust even for those video sequences that contain multiple and fast motions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transmission of JPEG 2000 images or video over wireless channels has to cope with the high probability and burstyness of errors introduced by Gaussian noise, linear distortions, and fading. At the receiver side, there is distortion due to the compression performed at the sender side, and to the errors introduced in the data stream by the channel. Progressive source coding can also be successfully exploited to protect different portions of the data stream with different channel code rates, based upon the relative importance that each portion has on the reconstructed image. Unequal Error Protection (UEP) schemes are generally adopted, which offer a close to the optimal solution. In this paper, we present a dichotomic technique for searching the optimal UEP strategy, which lends ideas from existing algorithms, for the transmission of JPEG 2000 images and video over a wireless channel. Moreover, we also adopt a method of virtual interleaving to be used for the transmission of high bit rate streams over packet loss channels, guaranteeing a large PSNR advantage over a plain transmission scheme. These two protection strategies can also be combined to maximize the error correction capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new technique for color enhancement in the compressed domain. The proposed technique is simple but more effective than some of the existing techniques reported earlier. The novelty lies in this case in its treatment of the chromatic components, while previous techniques treated only the luminance component. The results of all previous techniques along with that of the proposed one are compared with respect to those obtained by applying a spatial domain color enhancement technique that appears to provide very good enhancement. The proposed technique, computationally more efficient than the spatial domain based method, is found to provide better enhancement compared to other compressed domain based approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optical flow can be reliably estimated between areas visible in two images, but not in occlusion areas. If optical flow is needed in the whole image domain, one approach is to use additional views of the same scene. If such views are unavailable, an often-used alternative is to extrapolate optical flow in occlusion areas. Since the location of such areas is usually unknown prior to optical flow estimation, this is usually performed in three steps. First, occlusion-ignorant optical flow is estimated, then occlusion areas are identified using the estimated (unreliable) optical flow, and, finally, the optical flow is corrected using the computed occlusion areas. This approach, however, does not permit interaction between optical flow and occlusion estimates. In this paper, we permit such interaction by proposing a variational formulation that jointly computes optical flow, implicitly detects occlusions and extrapolates optical flow in occlusion areas. The extrapolation mechanism is based on anisotropic diffusion and uses the underlying image gradient to preserve structure, such as optical flow discontinuities. Our results show significant improvements in the computed optical flow fields over other approaches, both qualitatively and quantitatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel method for cost aggregation and occlusion handling for stereo matching. In order to estimate optimal cost, given a per-pixel difference image as observed data, we define an energy function and solve the minimization problem by solving the iterative equation with the numerical method. We improve performance and increase the convergence rate by using several acceleration techniques such as the Gauss-Seidel method, the multiscale approach, and adaptive interpolation. The proposed method is computationally efficient since it does not use color segmentation or any global optimization techniques. For occlusion handling, which has not been performed effectively by any conventional cost aggregation approaches, we combine the occlusion problem with the proposed minimization scheme. Asymmetric information is used so that few additional computational loads are necessary. Experimental results show that performance is comparable to that of many state-of-the-art methods. The proposed method is in fact the most successful among all cost aggregation methods based on standard stereo test beds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Active models have been widely used in image processing applications. A crucial stage that affects the ultimate active model performance is initialization. This paper proposes a novel automatic initialization approach for parametric active models in both 2-D and 3-D. The PIG initialization method exploits a novel technique that essentially estimates the external energy field from the external force field and determines the most likely initial segmentation. Examples and comparisons with two state-of-the-art automatic initialization methods are presented to illustrate the advantages of this innovation, including the ability to choose the number of active models deployed, rapid convergence, accommodation of broken edges, superior noise robustness, and segmentation accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the sequential-readout structure of complementary metal-oxide semiconductor image sensor array, each scanline of the acquired image is exposed at a different time, resulting in the so-called electronic rolling shutter that induces geometric image distortion when the object or the video camera moves during image capture. In this paper, we propose an image processing technique using a planar motion model to address the problem. Unlike previous methods that involve complex 3-D feature correspondences, a simple approach to the analysis of inter- and intraframe distortions is presented. The high-resolution velocity estimates used for restoring the image are obtained by global motion estimation, Bézier curve fitting, and local motion estimation without resort to correspondence identification. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the limited depth of feld of brightfield microscopes, it is usually impossible to image thick specimens entirely in focus. By optically sectioning the specimen, the in-focus information at the specimen's surface can be acquired over a range of images. Commonly based on a high-pass criterion, extended-depth-of-field methods aim at combining the in-focus information from these images into a single image of the texture on the specimen's surface. The topography provided by such methods is usually limited to a map of selected in-focus pixel positions and is inherently discretized along the axial direction, which limits its use for quantitative evaluation. In this paper, we propose a method that jointly estimates the texture and topography of a specimen from a series of brightfield optical sections; it is based on an image formation model that is described by the convolution of a thick specimen model with the microscope's point spread function. The problem is stated as a least-squares minimization where the texture and topography are updated alternately. This method also acts as a deconvolution when the in-focus PSF has a blurring effect, or when the true in-focus position falls in between two optical sections. Comparisons to state-of-the-art algorithms and experimental results demonstrate the potential of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a new approach, appearance-guided particle filtering (AGPF), for high degree-of-freedom visual tracking from an image sequence. This method adopts some known attractors in the state space and integrates both appearance and motion-transition information for visual tracking. A probability propagation model based on these two types of information is derived from a Bayesian formulation, and a particle filtering framework is developed to realize it. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is effective for high degree-of-freedom visual tracking problems, such as articulated hand tracking and lip-contour tracking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Real images can contain geometric distortions as well as photometric degradations. Analysis and characterization of those images without recourse to either restoration or geometric standardization is of great importance for the computer vision community as those two processes are often ill-posed problems. To this end, it is necessary to implement image descriptors that make it possible to identify the original image in a simple way independently of the imaging system and imaging conditions. Ideally, descriptors that capture image characteristics must be invariant to the whole range of geometric distortions and photometric degradations, such as blur, that may affect the image. In this paper, we introduce two new classes of radiometric and/or geometric invariant descriptors. The first class contains two types of radiometric invariant descriptors. The first of these type is based on the Mellin transform and the second one is based on central moments. Both descriptors are invariant to contrast changes and to convolution with any kernel having a symmetric form with respect to the diagonals. The second class contains two subclasses of combined invariant descriptors. The first subclass includes central-moment-based descriptors invariant simultaneously to horizontal and vertical translations, to uniform and anisotropic scaling, to stretching, to convolution, and to contrast changes. The second subclass contains central-complex-moment-based descriptors that are simultaneously invariant to similarity transformation and to contrast changes. We apply these invariant descriptors to the matching of geometric transformed and/or blurred images. Experimental results confirm both the robustness and the effectiveness of the proposed invariants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a maximum-entropy expectation- maximization (MEEM) algorithm. We use the proposed algorithm for density estimation. The maximum-entropy constraint is imposed for smoothness of the estimated density function. The derivation of the MEEM algorithm requires determination of the covariance matrix in the framework of the maximum-entropy likelihood function, which is difficult to solve analytically. We, therefore, derive the MEEM algorithm by optimizing a lower-bound of the maximum-entropy likelihood function. We note that the classical expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm has been employed previously for 2-D density estimation. We propose to extend the use of the classical EM algorithm for image recovery from randomly sampled data and sensor field estimation from randomly scattered sensor networks. We further propose to use our approach in density estimation, image recovery and sensor field estimation. Computer simulation experiments are used to demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed MEEM algorithm in comparison to existing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]