Image-Processing Approach Based on Nonlinear Image-Decomposition

It is a very important and intriguing problem in digital image-processing to decompose an input image into intuitively convincible image-components such as a structure component and a texture component, which is an inherently nonlinear problem. Recently, several numerical schemes to solve the nonlinear image-decomposition problem have been proposed. The use of the nonlinear image-decomposition as a pre-process of several image-processing tasks will possibly pave the way to solve difficult problems posed by the classic approach of digital image-processing. Since the new image-processing approach via the nonlinear image-decomposition treats each separated component with a processing method suitable to it, the approach will successfully attain target items seemingly contrary to each other, for instance invisibility of ringing artifacts and sharpness of edges and textures, which have not attained simultaneously by the classic image-processing approach. This paper reviews quite recently developed state-of-the-art schemes of the nonlinear image-decomposition, and introduces some examples of the decomposition-and-processing approach.