Noise reduction system

Abstract

A technique is provided to remove noise from images and to enhance their visual appearance through the utilization of a technique which converts an image into a set of coefficients in a multi-scale image decomposition process, followed by modification of each coefficient based on its value and the value of coefficients of related orientation, position, or scale, which is in turn followed by a reconstruction or synthesis process to generate the enhanced image. Also contributing to the improved enhancement is a set of orientation tuned filters of a specialized design to permit steering, with the analysis and synthesis filters also having a self-inverting characteristic. Additionally, steerable pyramid architecture is used for image enhancement for the first time, with the steering being provided by the above orientation tuned filters. The utilization of related coefficients permits coefficient modification with multipliers derived through a statistical or neural-network analysis of coefficients derived through the utilization of clean and degraded images, with the modifiers corresponding to vectors which result in translating the degraded image coefficients into clean image coefficients, in essence by cancelling those portions of a coefficient due to noise. Further improvements include an overlay of classical coring on single coefficients. Thus, the subject technique provides improved image enhancement through the use of a multi-band or scale-oriented analysis and synthesis transform having improved coefficient modification, good orientation tuning, improved bandpass characteristics, and good spatial localization.

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