Recognition of motion-blurred images by use of the method of moments

Motion blur invariant for estimating motion parameters of medical ultrasound images

High-quality medical ultrasound imaging is definitely concerning motion blur, while medical image analysis requires motionless and accurate data acquired by sonographers. The main idea of this paper is to establish some motion blur invariant in both frequency and moment domain to estimate the motion parameters of ultrasound images. We propose a discrete model of point spread function of motion blur convolution based on the Dirac delta function to simplify the analysis of motion invariant in frequency and moment domain. This model paves the way for estimating the motion angle and length in terms of the proposed invariant features. In this research, the performance of the proposed schemes is compared with other state-of-the-art existing methods of image deblurring. The experimental study performs using fetal phantom images and clinical fetal ultrasound images as well as breast scans. Moreover, to validate the accuracy of the proposed experimental framework, we apply two image quality assessment methods as no-reference and full-reference to show the robustness of the proposed algorithms compared to the well-known approaches.

Projection Operators and Moment Invariants to Image Blurring

In this paper we introduce a new theory of blur invariants. Blur invariants are image features which preserve their values if the image is convolved by a point-spread function (PSF) of a certain class. We present the invariants to convolution with an arbitrary N-fold symmetric PSF, both in Fourier and image domain. We introduce a notion of a primordial image as a canonical form of all blur-equivalent images. It is defined in spectral domain by means of projection operators. We prove that the moments of the primordial image are invariant to blur and we derive recursive formulae for their direct computation without actually constructing the primordial image. We further prove they form a complete set of invariants and show how to extent their invariance also to translation, rotation and scaling. We illustrate by simulated and real-data experiments their invariance and recognition power. Potential applications of this method are wherever one wants to recognize objects on blurred images.

Image deconvolution by means of frequency blur invariant concept

Different blur invariant descriptors have been proposed so far, which are either in the spatial domain or based on the properties available in the moment domain. In this paper, a frequency framework is proposed to develop blur invariant features that are used to deconvolve a degraded image caused by a Gaussian blur. These descriptors are obtained by establishing an equivalent relationship between the normalized Fourier transforms of the blurred and original images, both normalized by their respective fixed frequencies set to one. Advantage of using the proposed invariant descriptors is that it is possible to estimate both the point spread function (PSF) and the original image. The performance of frequency invariants will be demonstrated through experiments. An image deconvolution is done as an additional application to verify the proposed blur invariant features.

Water reflection recognition based on motion blur invariant moments in curvelet space

Water reflection, a typical imperfect reflection symmetry problem, plays an important role in image content analysis. Existing techniques of symmetry recognition, however, cannot recognize water reflection images correctly because of the complex and various distortions caused by the water wave. Hence, we propose a novel water reflection recognition technique to solve the problem. First, we construct a novel feature space composed of motion blur invariant moments in low-frequency curvelet space and of curvelet coefficients in high-frequency curvelet space. Second, we propose an efficient algorithm including two sub-algorithms: low-frequency reflection cost minimization and high-frequency curvelet coefficients discrimination to classify water reflection images and to determine the reflection axis. Through experimenting on authentic images in a series of tasks, the proposed techniques prove effective and reliable in classifying water reflection images and detecting the reflection axis, as well as in retrieving images with water reflection.

Target recognition of ladar range images using even-order Zernike moments

Ladar range images have attracted considerable attention in automatic target recognition fields. In this paper, Zernike moments (ZMs) are applied to classify the target of the range image from an arbitrary azimuth angle. However, ZMs suffer from high computational costs. To improve the performance of target recognition based on small samples, even-order ZMs with serial-parallel backpropagation neural networks (BPNNs) are applied to recognize the target of the range image. It is found that the rotation invariance and classified performance of the even-order ZMs are both better than for odd-order moments and for moments compressed by principal component analysis. The experimental results demonstrate that combining the even-order ZMs with serial-parallel BPNNs can significantly improve the recognition rate for small samples.

Real-time image deblurring by optoelectronic hybrid processing

An efficient approach is presented to restore a motion-blurred image in real time by optoelectronic hybrid processing, by which an image motion vector can be effectively detected and an accurate point spread function is constructed rapidly. A simple Wiener filter algorithm is employed to restore the blurred image. It greatly alleviates the complexity of the restoration algorithm. The proposed approach can apply to arbitrary motion-blurred image restoration. An optoelectronic hybrid joint transform correlation is constructed to verify the efficiency. The experimental results show that the proposed method has distinct advantages of preferable effect and good real time.

Combined invariants to similarity transformation and to blur using orthogonal Zernike moments

The derivation of moment invariants has been extensively investigated in the past decades. In this paper, we construct a set of invariants derived from Zernike moments which is simultaneously invariant to similarity transformation and to convolution with circularly symmetric point spread function (PSF). Two main contributions are provided: the theoretical framework for deriving the Zernike moments of a blurred image and the way to construct the combined geometric-blur invariants. The performance of the proposed descriptors is evaluated with various PSFs and similarity transformations. The comparison of the proposed method with the existing ones is also provided in terms of pattern recognition accuracy, template matching and robustness to noise. Experimental results show that the proposed descriptors perform on the overall better.

Blurred image recognition by Legendre moment invariants

Processing blurred images is a key problem in many image applications. Existing methods to obtain blur invariants which are invariant with respect to centrally symmetric blur are based on geometric moments or complex moments. In this paper, we propose a new method to construct a set of blur invariants using the orthogonal Legendre moments. Some important properties of Legendre moments for the blurred image are presented and proved. The performance of the proposed descriptors is evaluated with various point-spread functions and different image noises. The comparison of the present approach with previous methods in terms of pattern recognition accuracy is also provided. The experimental results show that the proposed descriptors are more robust to noise and have better discriminative power than the methods based on geometric or complex moments.

New classes of radiometric and combined radiometric-geometric invariant descriptors

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.

Motion-based motion deblurring

Motion blur due to camera motion can significantly degrade the quality of an image. Since the path of the camera motion can be arbitrary, deblurring of motion blurred images is a hard problem. Previous methods to deal with this problem have included blind restoration of motion blurred images, optical correction using stabilized lenses, and special cmos sensors that limit the exposure time in the presence of motion. In this paper, we exploit the fundamental trade off between spatial resolution and temporal resolution to construct a hybrid camera that can measure its own motion during image integration. The acquired motion information is used to compute a point spread function (psf) that represents the path of the camera during integration. This psf is then used to deblur the image. To verify the feasibility of hybrid imaging for motion deblurring, we have implemented a prototype hybrid camera. This prototype system was evaluated in different indoor and outdoor scenes using long exposures and complex camera motion paths. The results show that, with minimal resources, hybrid imaging outperforms previous approaches to the motion blur problem. We conclude with a brief discussion on how our ideas can be extended beyond the case of global camera motion to the case where individual objects in the scene move with different velocities.