Multispectral image denoising with optimized vector bilateral filter

Image Denoising via Bandwise Adaptive Modeling and Regularization Exploiting Nonlocal Similarity

This paper proposes a new image denoising algorithm based on adaptive signal modeling and regularization. It improves the quality of images by regularizing each image patch using bandwise distribution modeling in transform domain. Instead of using a global model for all the patches in an image, it employs content-dependent adaptive models to address the non-stationarity of image signals and also the diversity among different transform bands. The distribution model is adaptively estimated for each patch individually. It varies from one patch location to another and also varies for different bands. In particular, we consider the estimated distribution to have non-zero expectation. To estimate the expectation and variance parameters for every band of a particular patch, we exploit the nonlocal correlation in image to collect a set of highly similar patches as the data samples to form the distribution. Irrelevant patches are excluded so that such adaptively learned model is more accurate than a global one. The image is ultimately restored via bandwise adaptive soft-thresholding, based on a Laplacian approximation of the distribution of similar-patch group transform coefficients. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms several state-of-the-art denoising methods in both the objective and the perceptual qualities.

Bayesian Inference for Neighborhood Filters With Application in Denoising

Range-weighted neighborhood filters are useful and popular for their edge-preserving property and simplicity, but they are originally proposed as intuitive tools. Previous works needed to connect them to other tools or models for indirect property reasoning or parameter estimation. In this paper, we introduce a unified empirical Bayesian framework to do both directly. A neighborhood noise model is proposed to reason and infer the Yaroslavsky, bilateral, and modified non-local means filters by joint maximum a posteriori and maximum likelihood estimation. Then, the essential parameter, range variance, can be estimated via model fitting to the empirical distribution of an observable chi scale mixture variable. An algorithm based on expectation-maximization and quasi-Newton optimization is devised to perform the model fitting efficiently. Finally, we apply this framework to the problem of color-image denoising. A recursive fitting and filtering scheme is proposed to improve the image quality. Extensive experiments are performed for a variety of configurations, including different kernel functions, filter types and support sizes, color channel numbers, and noise types. The results show that the proposed framework can fit noisy images well and the range variance can be estimated successfully and efficiently.