https://fisica.cab.cnea.gov.ar/gpgpu/images/charlas/medical_image_processing_on_the_gpu.pdf

Medical Image Processing on the GPU : Past, Present and Future

Imaging techniques seek to simulate the array of light that reaches our eyes to provide the illusion of sensing scenes directly. Both photography and computer graphics deal with the generation of images. Both disciplines have to cope with the high dynamic range in the energy of visible light that human eyes can sense. Traditionally photography and computer graphics took different approaches to the high dynamic range problem. Work over the last ten years though has unified these disciplines and created powerful new tools for the creation of complex, compelling and realistic images. This book provides a practical introduction to the emerging new discipline of high dynamic range imaging that combines photography and computer graphics. By providing detailed equations and code, the book gives the reader the tools needed to experiment with new techniques for creating compelling images. A supplemental website contains downloads and additional information.

Advanced High Dynamic Range Imaging: Theory and Practice

To embrace the imminent transition from traditional low-contrast video (LDR) content to superior high dynamic range (HDR) content, we propose a novel backward compatible HDR video compression (HDR MPEG) method. We introduce a compact reconstruction function that is used to decompose an HDR video stream into a residual stream and a standard LDR stream, which can be played on existing MPEG decoders, such as DVD players. The reconstruction function is finely tuned to the content of each HDR frame to achieve strong decorrelation between the LDR and residual streams, which minimizes the amount of redundant information. The size of the residual stream is further reduced by removing invisible details prior to compression using our HDR-enabled filter, which models luminance adaptation, contrast sensitivity, and visual masking based on the HDR content. Designed especially for DVD movie distribution, our HDR MPEG compression method features low storage requirements for HDR content resulting in a 30% size increase to an LDR video sequence. The proposed compression method does not impose restrictions or modify the appearance of the LDR or HDR video. This is important for backward compatibility of the LDR stream with current DVD appearance, and also enables independent fine tuning, tone mapping, and color grading of both streams.

/pdf/backward-compatible-high-dynamic-range-mpeg-video-1khx376mla.pdf

Backward compatible high dynamic range MPEG video compression

Techniques are provided to encode and decode image data comprising a tone mapped (TM) image with HDR reconstruction data in the form of luminance ratios and color residual values. In an example embodiment, luminance ratio values and residual values in color channels of a color space are generated on an individual pixel basis based on a high dynamic range (HDR) image and a derivative tone-mapped (TM) image that comprises one or more color alterations that would not be recoverable from the TM image with a luminance ratio image. The TM image with HDR reconstruction data derived from the luminance ratio values and the color-channel residual values may be outputted in an image file to a downstream device, for example, for decoding, rendering, and/or storing. The image file may be decoded to generate a restored HDR image free of the color alterations.

Encoding, decoding, and representing high dynamic range images

Monte Carlo integration is firmly established as the basis for most practical realistic image synthesis algorithms because of its flexibility and generality. However, the visual quality of rendered images often suffers from estimator variance, which appears as visually distracting noise. Adaptive sampling and reconstruction algorithms reduce variance by controlling the sampling density and aggregating samples in a reconstruction step, possibly over large image regions. In this paper we survey recent advances in this area. We distinguish between "a priori" methods that analyze the light transport equations and derive sampling rates and reconstruction filters from this analysis, and "a posteriori" methods that apply statistical techniques to sets of samples to drive the adaptive sampling and reconstruction process. They typically estimate the errors of several reconstruction filters, and select the best filter locally to minimize error. We discuss advantages and disadvantages of recent state-of-the-art techniques, and provide visual and quantitative comparisons. Some of these techniques are proving useful in real-world applications, and we aim to provide an overview for practitioners and researchers to assess these approaches. In addition, we discuss directions for potential further improvements.

/pdf/recent-advances-in-adaptive-sampling-and-reconstruction-for-zfbba7tefu.pdf

Recent Advances in Adaptive Sampling and Reconstruction for Monte Carlo Rendering

The raw size of a high-dynamic-range (HDR) image brings about problems in storage and transmission. Many bytes are wasted in data redundancy and perceptually unimportant information. To address this problem, researchers have proposed some preliminary algorithms to compress the data, like RGBE/XYZE, OpenEXR, LogLuv, and so on. HDR images can have a dynamic range of more than four orders of magnitude while conventional 8-bit images retain only two orders of magnitude of the dynamic range. This distinction between an HDR image and a conventional image leads to difficulties in using most existing image compressors. JPEG 2000 supports up to 16-bit integer data, so it can already provide image compression for most HDR images. In this article, we propose a JPEG 2000-based lossy image compression scheme for HDR images of all dynamic ranges. We show how to fit HDR encoding into a JPEG 2000 encoder to meet the HDR encoding requirement. To achieve the goal of minimum error in the logarithm domain, we map the logarithm of each pixel value into integer values and then send the results to a JPEG 2000 encoder. Our approach is basically a wavelet-based HDR still-image encoding method.

High-dynamic-range still-image encoding in JPEG 2000

Monte Carlo noise appears as outliers and as interpixel incoherence in a typical image rendered at low sampling density Unfortunately, none of the previous approaches can reduce both types of noise in a unified way In this article, we propose such a unified Monte Carlo noise reduction approach using bilateral filtering We extended the standard bilateral filtering method and built a new local adaptive noise reduction kernel The new operator suppresses the outliers and interpixel incoherence in a noniterative way

R. Xu

Papers

High-dynamic-range still-image encoding in JPEG 2000

A novel Monte Carlo noise reduction operator