In this paper, we propose a new no-reference (NR)/ blind sharpness metric in the autoregressive (AR) parameter space. Our model is established via the analysis of AR model parameters, first calculating the energy- and contrast-differences in the locally estimated AR coefficients in a pointwise way, and then quantifying the image sharpness with percentile pooling to predict the overall score. In addition to the luminance domain, we further consider the inevitable effect of color information on visual perception to sharpness and thereby extend the above model to the widely used YIQ color space. Validation of our technique is conducted on the subsets with blurring artifacts from four large-scale image databases (LIVE, TID2008, CSIQ, and TID2013). Experimental results confirm the superiority and efficiency of our method over existing NR algorithms, the state-of-the-art blind sharpness/blurriness estimators, and classical full-reference quality evaluators. Furthermore, the proposed metric can be also extended to stereoscopic images based on binocular rivalry, and attains remarkably high performance on LIVE3D-I and LIVE3D-II databases.

No-Reference Image Sharpness Assessment in Autoregressive Parameter Space

With the explosion in the number of digital images taken every day, the demand for more accurate and visually pleasing images is increasing. However, the images captured by modern cameras are inevitably degraded by noise, which leads to deteriorated visual image quality. Therefore, work is required to reduce noise without losing image features (edges, corners, and other sharp structures). So far, researchers have already proposed various methods for decreasing noise. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages. In this paper, we summarize some important research in the field of image denoising. First, we give the formulation of the image denoising problem, and then we present several image denoising techniques. In addition, we discuss the characteristics of these techniques. Finally, we provide several promising directions for future research.

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Brief review of image denoising techniques

Nonlocal self-similarity of images has attracted considerable interest in the field of image processing and has led to several state-of-the-art image denoising algorithms, such as block matching and 3-D, principal component analysis with local pixel grouping, patch-based locally optimal wiener, and spatially adaptive iterative singular-value thresholding. In this paper, we propose a computationally simple denoising algorithm using the nonlocal self-similarity and the low-rank approximation (LRA). The proposed method consists of three basic steps. First, our method classifies similar image patches by the block-matching technique to form the similar patch groups, which results in the similar patch groups to be low rank. Next, each group of similar patches is factorized by singular value decomposition (SVD) and estimated by taking only a few largest singular values and corresponding singular vectors. Finally, an initial denoised image is generated by aggregating all processed patches. For low-rank matrices, SVD can provide the optimal energy compaction in the least square sense. The proposed method exploits the optimal energy compaction property of SVD to lead an LRA of similar patch groups. Unlike other SVD-based methods, the LRA in SVD domain avoids learning the local basis for representing image patches, which usually is computationally expensive. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively reduce noise and be competitive with the current state-of-the-art denoising algorithms in terms of both quantitative metrics and subjective visual quality.

An Efficient SVD-Based Method for Image Denoising

Recovering the image corrupted by additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and impulse noise is a challenging problem due to its difficulties in an accurate modeling of the distributions of the mixture noise. Many efforts have been made to first detect the locations of the impulse noise and then recover the clean image with image in painting techniques from an incomplete image corrupted by AWGN. However, it is quite challenging to accurately detect the locations of the impulse noise when the mixture noise is strong. In this paper, we propose an effective mixture noise removal method based on Laplacian scale mixture (LSM) modeling and nonlocal low-rank regularization. The impulse noise is modeled with LSM distributions, and both the hidden scale parameters and the impulse noise are jointly estimated to adaptively characterize the real noise. To exploit the nonlocal self-similarity and low-rank nature of natural image, a nonlocal low-rank regularization is adopted to regularize the denoising process. Experimental results on synthetic noisy images show that the proposed method outperforms existing mixture noise removal methods.

Mixed Noise Removal via Laplacian Scale Mixture Modeling and Nonlocal Low-Rank Approximation

A comprehensive survey on impulse and Gaussian denoising filters for digital images

Accurate estimation of Gaussian noise level is of fundamental interest in a wide variety of vision and image processing applications as it is critical to the processing techniques that follow. In this paper, a new effective noise level estimation method is proposed on the basis of the study of singular values of noise-corrupted images. Two novel aspects of this paper address the major challenges in noise estimation: 1) the use of the tail of singular values for noise estimation to alleviate the influence of the signal on the data basis for the noise estimation process and 2) the addition of known noise to estimate the content-dependent parameter, so that the proposed scheme is adaptive to visual signals, thereby enabling a wider application scope of the proposed scheme. The analysis and experiment results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can reliably infer noise levels and show robust behavior over a wide range of visual content and noise conditions, and that is outperforms relevant existing methods.

Additive White Gaussian Noise Level Estimation in SVD Domain for Images

Accurate estimation of noise level is of fundamental interest in a wide variety of vision and image processing applications as it is critical to the processing techniques that follow. In this paper, a new, effective noise level estimation method is proposed based on the study of singular values of noise-corrupted images. There are two major novel aspects of this work to address the major challenges in noise estimation: 1) the use of the tail of singular values for noise estimation to alleviate the influence of the signal on the data basis for the noise estimation process, 2) the addition of known noise to estimate the content-dependent parameter, so that the proposed scheme is adaptive to visual signal and therefore it enables wider application scope of the proposed scheme. The analysis and experiments results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can reliably infer noise levels and show robust behavior over a wide range of visual content and noise conditions, in comparison with the relevant existing methods.

Wei Liu

Papers

Additive White Gaussian Noise Level Estimation in SVD Domain for Images

Gaussian Noise Level Estimation in SVD Domain for Images