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Several strategies have been applied for the recovery of the missing parts in an image, with recovery performance depending significantly on the image type and the geometry of missing data. To provide a deeper understanding of such image restoration problem, King et al. recently introduced a rigorous multiscale analysis framework and proved that a shearlet based inpainting approach outperforms methods based on more conventional multiscale representations when missing data are line singularities. In this paper, we extend and improve the analysis of the inpainting problem to the more realistic and more challenging setting of images containing curvilinear singularities. We derive inpainting performance guarantees showing that exact image recovery is achieved if the size of the missing singularity is smaller than the size of the structure elements of appropriate functional representations of the image. Our proof relies critically on the microlocal and sparsity properties of the shearlet representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smooth orthogonal projections with good localization properties were originally studied in the wavelet literature as a way to both understand and generalize the construction of smooth wavelet bases on L 2 (ℝ) . Smoothness plays a critical role in the construction of wavelet bases and their generalizations as it is instrumental to achieve excellent approximation properties. In this paper, we extend the construction of smooth orthogonal projections to higher dimensions, a challenging problem in general for which relatively few results are found in the literature. Our investigation is motivated by the study of multidimensional nonseparable multiscale systems such as shearlets. Using our new class of smooth orthogonal projections, we construct new smooth Parseval frames of shearlets in L 2 (ℝ 2) and L 2 (ℝ 3) . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edges and surface boundaries are often the most relevant features in images and multidimensional data. It is well known that multiscale methods including wavelets and their more sophisticated multidimensional siblings offer a powerful tool for the analysis and detection of such sets. Among such methods, the continuous shearlet transform has been especially successful. This method combines anisotropic scaling and directional sensitivity controlled by shear transformations in order to precisely identify not only the location of edges and boundary points but also edge orientation and corner points. In this paper, we show that this framework can be made even more flexible by controlling the scaling parameter of the anisotropic dilation matrix and considering non-parabolic scaling. We prove that, using 'higher-than-parabolic' scaling, the modified shearlet transform is also able to estimate the degree of local flatness of an edge or surface boundary, providing more detailed information about the geometry of edge and boundary points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis and detection of edges is a central problem in applied mathematics and image processing. A number of results in recent years have shown that directional multiscale methods such as continuous curvelet and shearlet transforms offer a powerful theoretical framework to capture the geometry of edge singularities, going far beyond the capabilities of the conventional wavelet transform. The continuous shearlet transform, in particular, provides a precise geometric characterization of edges in piecewise constant functions in R 2 and R 3 , including corner points. However, a question has been raised frequently: What happens if the function is piecewise smooth and not just piecewise constant? Clearly, a piecewise smooth function is a much more realistic model of images with edges. In this paper, we extend the characterization results previously known and show that, also in the case of piecewise smooth functions, the continuous shearlet transform can detect the location and orientation of edge points, including corner points, through its asymptotic decay at fine scales. The new proof introduces innovative technical constructions to deal with the more challenging problem. The new results set the theoretical groundwork for the application of the shearlet framework to a wider class of problems from image processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suppose that Ω is a three-dimensional solid with boundary surface S = S 1 ∪ ⋯ ∪ S q , where each S r is a smooth surface with boundary curve Γ r . Multiscale directional representation systems (e.g., shearlets) are able to capture the essential geometry of Ω by precisely identifying the boundary set N = { ( p , n r ( p ) ) : p ∈ S r , r = 1 , … , q } , where n r ( p ) denotes the normal vector to the surface S r at p . This property has resulted in the successful application of multiscale directional methods in a variety of image processing problems, since edges and boundary sets are usually the most informative features in many types of multidimensional data. However, existing methods are ill-suited to capture those edge-type singularities in the three-dimensional setting resulting from the intersection of piecewise smooth boundary surfaces. In this paper, we introduce a new multiscale directional system based on a modification of the shearlet framework and prove that the associated continuous transform has the ability to precisely identify both the location and orientation of the boundary curves Γ r from the solid Ω . This paper extends a number of results appeared in the literature in recent years to the challenging problem of extracting curvilinear singularities in three-dimensional objects and is motivated by image analysis problems arising from areas including biomedical and seismic imaging and astronomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a new decomposition of the 3D X-ray transform based on the shearlet representation, a multiscale directional representation which is optimally efficient in handling 3D data containing edge singularities. Using this decomposition, we derive a highly effective reconstruction algorithm yielding a near-optimal rate of convergence in estimating piecewise smooth objects from 3D X-ray tomographic data which are corrupted by white Gaussian noise. This algorithm is achieved by applying a thresholding scheme on the 3D shearlet transform coefficients of the noisy data which, for a given noise level ε, can be tuned so that the estimator attains the essentially optimal mean square error rate O(log( ε) ε), as ε→0. This is the first published result to achieve this type of error estimate, outperforming methods based on Wavelet-Vaguelettes decomposition and on SVD, which can only achieve MSE rates of O( ε) and O( ε), respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we introduce a digital implementation of the 3-D shearlet transform and illustrate its application to problems of video denoising and enhancement. The shearlet representation is a multiscale pyramid of well-localized waveforms defined at various locations and orientations, which was introduced to overcome the limitations of traditional multiscale systems in dealing with multidimensional data. While the shearlet approach shares the general philosophy of curvelets and surfacelets, it is based on a very different mathematical framework, which is derived from the theory of affine systems and uses shearing matrices rather than rotations. This allows a natural transition from the continuous setting to the digital setting and a more flexible mathematical structure. The 3-D digital shearlet transform algorithm presented in this paper consists in a cascade of a multiscale decomposition and a directional filtering stage. The filters employed in this decomposition are implemented as finite-length filters, and this ensures that the transform is local and numerically efficient. To illustrate its performance, the 3-D discrete shearlet transform is applied to problems of video denoising and enhancement, and compared against other state-of-the-art multiscale techniques, including curvelets and surfacelets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a Parseval frame of shearlets for the representation of three-dimensional (3D) data, which is especially designed to handle geometric features such as discontinuous boundaries with very high efficiency. This system of 3D shearlets forms a multiscale pyramid of well-localized waveforms at various locations and orientations, which become increasingly thin and elongated at fine scales. We prove that this 3D shearlet construction provides essentially optimal sparse representations for functions on R3 which are C²-regular away from discontinuities along C²2 surfaces. As a consequence, we show that, within this class of functions, the N-term approximation fNS obtained by selecting the N largest coefficients of the shearlet expansion of f satisfies the asymptotic estimate ... This asymptotic behavior significantly outperforms wavelet and Fourier series approximations, which yield an approximation rate of only O(N-1/2) and O(N-1/3), respectively. This result extends to the 3D setting the (essentially) optimally sparse approximation results obtained by the authors using 2D shearlets and by Candes and Donoho using curvelets and is the first nonadaptive construction to provide provably (nearly) optimal representations for a large class of 3D data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wavelets with composite dilations provide a general framework for the construction of waveforms defined not only at various scales and locations, as traditional wavelets, but also at various orientations and with different scaling factors in each coordinate. As a result, they are useful to analyze the geometric information that often dominate multidimensional data much more efficiently than traditional wavelets. The shearlet system, for example, is a particular well-known realization of this framework, which provides optimally sparse representations of images with edges. In this paper, we further investigate the constructions derived from this approach to develop critically sampled wavelets with composite dilations for the purpose of image coding. Not only do we show that many nonredundant directional constructions recently introduced in the literature can be derived within this setting, but we also introduce new critically sampled discrete transforms that achieve much better nonlinear approximation rates than traditional discrete wavelet transforms and outperform the other critically sampled multiscale transforms recently proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Directional multiscale transforms such as the shearlet transform have emerged in recent years for their ability to capture the geometrical information associated with the singularity sets of bivariate functions and distributions. One of the most striking features of the continuous shearlet transform is that it provides a very simple and precise geometrical characterization for the boundary curves of general planar regions. However, no specific results were known so far in higher dimensions, since the arguments used in dimension do not directly carry over to the higher dimensional setting. In this paper, we extend this framework for the analysis of singularities to the 3-dimensional setting, and show that the 3-dimensional continuous shearlet transform precisely characterizes the boundary set of solid regions in by identifying both its location and local orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: It is well known that the continuous wavelet transform has the ability to identify the set of singularities of a function or distribution f. It was recently shown that certain multidimensional generalizations of the wavelet transform are useful to capture additional information about the geometry of the singularities of f. In this paper, we consider the continuous shearlet transform, which is the mapping , where the analyzing elements form an affine system of well localized functions at continuous scales , locations , and oriented along lines of slope in the frequency domain. We show that the continuous shearlet transform allows one to exactly identify the location and orientation of the edges of planar objects. In particular, if where the functions are smooth and the sets have smooth boundaries, then one can use the asymptotic decay of , as (fine scales), to exactly characterize the location and orientation of the boundaries . This improves similar results recently obtained in the literature and provides the theoretical background for the development of improved algorithms for edge detection and analysis. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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]

Abstract: In spite of their remarkable success in signal processing applications, it is now widely acknowledged that traditional wavelets are not very effective in dealing multidimensional signals containing distributed discontinuities such as edges. To overcome this limitation, one has to use basis elements with much higher directional sensitivity and of various shapes, to be able to capture the intrinsic geometrical features of multidimensional phenomena. This paper introduces a new discrete multiscale directional representation called the discrete shearlet transform. This approach, which is based on the shearlet transform, combines the power of multiscale methods with a unique ability to capture the geometry of multidimensional data and is optimally efficient in representing images containing edges. We describe two different methods of implementing the shearlet transform. The numerical experiments presented in this paper demonstrate that the discrete shearlet transform is very competitive in denoising applications both in terms of performance and computational efficiency. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper we show that shearlets, an affine-like system of functions recently introduced by the authors and their collaborators, are essentially optimal in representing 2-dimensional functions ƒ which are C2 except for discontinuities along C2 curves. More specifically, if ƒSN is the N-term reconstruction of ƒ obtained by using the N largest coefficients in the shearlet representation, then the asymptotic approximation error decays as ||ƒ-ƒNS||22 ≍ N-2 (logN)3, N → ∞ which is essentially optimal, and greatly outperforms the corresponding asymptotic approximation rate N-1 associated with wavelet approximations. Unlike curvelets, which have similar sparsity properties, shearlets form an affine-like system and have a simpler mathematical structure. In fact, the elements of this system form a Parseval frame and are generated by applying dilations, shear transformations, and translations to a single well-localized window function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Affine systems are reproducing systems of the form which arise by applying lattice translation operators to one or more generators in , followed by the application of dilation operators , associated with a countable set of invertible matrices. In the wavelet literature, is usually taken to be the group consisting of all integer powers of a fixed expanding matrix. In this paper, we develop the properties of much more general systems, for which where A and B are not necessarily commuting matrix sets. need not contain a single expanding matrix. Nonetheless, for many choices of A and B, there are wavelet systems with multiresolution properties very similar to those of classical dyadic wavelets. Typically, A expands or contracts only in certain directions, while B acts by volume-preserving maps in transverse directions. Then the resulting wavelets exhibit the geometric properties, e.g., directionality, elongated shapes, scales, oscillations, recently advocated by many authors for multidimensional signal and image processing applications. Our method is a systematic approach to the theory of affine-like systems yielding these and more general features. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In [E. Herna´ndez, D. Labate, G. Weiss, J. Geom. Anal. 12 (4) (2002) 615–662], three of the authors obtained a characterization of certain types of reproducing systems. In this work, we apply these results and methods to various affine-like, wave packets and Gabor systems to determine their frame properties. In particular, we study how oversampled systems inherit properties (like the frame bounds) of the original systems. Moreover, our approach allows us to study the phenomenon of oversampling in much greater generality than is found in the literature. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract Recent advances in the field of multiscale representations have spurred the emergence of a new generation of powerful techniques for the efficient analysis of images and other multidimensional data. These novel techniques enable the quantification of essential geometric characteristics in complex imaging data resulting in improved algorithms for image restoration, feature extraction and classification. We discuss the application of these ideas in neuroscience imaging and describe a novel method for the accurate and efficient identification of cellular bodies of neurons in multicellular images. This method is instrumental to the design of a novel algorithm for neuronal tracing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we introduce a novel two-stage denoising method for the removal of random-valued impulse noise (RVIN) in images. The first stage of our algorithm applies an impulse-noise detection routine that is a refinement of the HEIND algorithm and is very accurate in identifying the location of the noisy pixels. The second stage is an image inpainting routine that is designed to restore the missing information at those pixels that have been identified during the first stage. One of the novelties of our approach is that our inpainting routine takes advantage of the shearlet representation to efficiently recover the geometry of the original image. This method is particularly effective to eliminate jagged edges and other visual artifacts that frequently affect many RVIN denoising algorithms, especially at higher noise levels. We present extensive numerical demonstrations to show that our approach is very effective to remove random-valued impulse noise without any significant loss of fine-scale detail. Our algorithm compares very favourably against state-of-the-art methods in terms of both visual quality and quantitative measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The inversion of the Radon transform is a classical ill-posed inverse problem where some method of regularization must be applied in order to accurately recover the objects of interest from the observable data. A well-known consequence of the traditional regularization methods is that some important features to be recovered are lost, as evident in imaging applications where the regularized reconstructions are blurred versions of the original. In this paper, we show that the affine-like system of functions known as the shearlet system can be applied to obtain a highly effective reconstruction algorithm which provides near-optimal rate of convergence in estimating a large class of images from noisy Radon data. This is achieved by introducing a shearlet-based decomposition of the Radon operator and applying a thresholding scheme on the noisy shearlet transform coefficients. For a given noise level ε, the proposed shearlet shrinkage method can be tuned so that the estimator will attain the essentially optimal mean square error , as . Several numerical demonstrations show that its performance improves upon similar competitive strategies based on wavelets and curvelets. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]