Nonlocal Mumford-Shah regularizers for color image restoration.

We propose here a class of restoration algorithms for color images, based upon the Mumford-Shah (MS) model and nonlocal image information. The Ambrosio-Tortorelli and Shah elliptic approximations are defined to work in a small local neighborhood, which are sufficient to denoise smooth regions with sharp boundaries. However, texture is nonlocal in nature and requires semilocal/non-local information for efficient image denoising and restoration. Inspired from recent works (nonlocal means of Buades, Coll, Morel, and nonlocal total variation of Gilboa, Osher), we extend the local Ambrosio-Tortorelli and Shah approximations to MS functional (MS) to novel nonlocal formulations, for better restoration of fine structures and texture. We present several applications of the proposed nonlocal MS regularizers in image processing such as color image denoising, color image deblurring in the presence of Gaussian or impulse noise, color image inpainting, color image super-resolution, and color filter array demosaicing. In all the applications, the proposed nonlocal regularizers produce superior results over the local ones, especially in image inpainting with large missing regions. We also prove several characterizations of minimizers based upon dual norm formulations.

HARDI DATA DENOISING USING VECTORIAL TOTAL VARIATION AND LOGARITHMIC BARRIER.

In this work, we wish to denoise HARDI (High Angular Resolution Diffusion Imaging) data arising in medical brain imaging. Diffusion imaging is a relatively new and powerful method to measure the three-dimensional profile of water diffusion at each point in the brain. These images can be used to reconstruct fiber directions and pathways in the living brain, providing detailed maps of fiber integrity and connectivity. HARDI data is a powerful new extension of diffusion imaging, which goes beyond the diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) model: mathematically, intensity data is given at every voxel and at any direction on the sphere. Unfortunately, HARDI data is usually highly contaminated with noise, depending on the b-value which is a tuning parameter pre-selected to collect the data. Larger b-values help to collect more accurate information in terms of measuring diffusivity, but more noise is generated by many factors as well. So large b-values are preferred, if we can satisfactorily reduce the noise without losing the data structure. Here we propose two variational methods to denoise HARDI data. The first one directly denoises the collected data S, while the second one denoises the so-called sADC (spherical Apparent Diffusion Coefficient), a field of radial functions derived from the data. These two quantities are related by an equation of the form S = S(S)exp (-b · sADC) (in the noise-free case). By applying these two different models, we will be able to determine which quantity will most accurately preserve data structure after denoising. The theoretical analysis of the proposed models is presented, together with experimental results and comparisons for denoising synthetic and real HARDI data.

Fast cartoon + texture image filters.

Can images be decomposed into the sum of a geometric part and a textural part? In a theoretical breakthrough, [Y. Meyer, Oscillating Patterns in Image Processing and Nonlinear Evolution Equations. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society, 2001] proposed variational models that force the geometric part into the space of functions with bounded variation, and the textural part into a space of oscillatory distributions. Meyer's models are simple minimization problems extending the famous total variation model. However, their numerical solution has proved challenging. It is the object of a literature rich in variants and numerical attempts. This paper starts with the linear model, which reduces to a low-pass/high-pass filter pair. A simple conversion of the linear filter pair into a nonlinear filter pair involving the total variation is introduced. This new-proposed nonlinear filter pair retains both the essential features of Meyer's models and the simplicity and rapidity of the linear model. It depends upon only one transparent parameter: the texture scale, measured in pixel mesh. Comparative experiments show a better and faster separation of cartoon from texture. One application is illustrated: edge detection.

Self-repelling snakes for topology-preserving segmentation models.

The implicit framework of the level-set method has several advantages when tracking propagating fronts. Indeed, the evolving contour is embedded in a higher dimensional level-set function and its evolution can be phrased in terms of a Eulerian formulation. The ability of this intrinsic method to handle topological changes (merging and breaking) makes it useful in a wide range of applications (fluid mechanics, computer vision) and particularly in image segmentation, the main subject of this paper. Nevertheless, in some applications, this topological flexibility turns out to be undesirable: for instance, when the shape to be detected has a known topology, or when the resulting shape must be homeomorphic to the initial one. The necessity of designing topology-preserving processes arises in medical imaging, for example, in the human cortex reconstruction. It is known that the human cortex has a spherical topology so throughout the reconstruction process this topological feature must be preserved. Therefore, we propose in this paper a segmentation model based on an implicit level-set formulation and on the geodesic active contours, in which a topological constraint is enforced.