A scheme for image compression that takes into account psychovisual features both in the space and frequency domains is proposed. This method involves two steps. First, a wavelet transform used in order to obtain a set of biorthogonal subclasses of images: the original image is decomposed at different scales using a pyramidal algorithm architecture. The decomposition is along the vertical and horizontal directions and maintains constant the number of pixels required to describe the image. Second, according to Shannon's rate distortion theory, the wavelet coefficients are vector quantized using a multiresolution codebook. To encode the wavelet coefficients, a noise shaping bit allocation procedure which assumes that details at high resolution are less visible to the human eye is proposed. In order to allow the receiver to recognize a picture as quickly as possible at minimum cost, a progressive transmission scheme is presented. It is shown that the wavelet transform is particularly well adapted to progressive transmission.

Many image processing problems are ill-posed and must be regularized. Usually, a roughness penalty is imposed on the solution. The difficulty is to avoid the smoothing of edges, which are very important attributes of the image. In this paper, we first give conditions for the design of such an edge-preserving regularization. Under these conditions, we show that it is possible to introduce an auxiliary variable whose role is twofold. First, it marks the discontinuities and ensures their preservation from smoothing. Second, it makes the criterion half-quadratic. The optimization is then easier. We propose a deterministic strategy, based on alternate minimizations on the image and the auxiliary variable. This leads to the definition of an original reconstruction algorithm, called ARTUR. Some theoretical properties of ARTUR are discussed. Experimental results illustrate the behavior of the algorithm. These results are shown in the field of 2D single photon emission tomography, but this method can be applied in a large number of applications in image processing.

Many image processing problems are ill-posed and must be regularized. Usually, a roughness penalty is imposed on the solution. The difficulty is to avoid the smoothing of edges, which are very important attributes of the image.In this paper, we first give sufficient conditions for the design of such an edge-preserving regularization. Under these conditions, it is possible to introduce an auxiliary variable which role is twofold. Firstly, it marks the discontinuities and ensures their preservation from smoothing. Secondly, it makes the criterion half-quadratic. The optimization is then easier. We propose a deterministic strategy, based on alternate minimizations on the image and the auxiliary variable. This yields two algorithms, ARTUR and LEGEND. In this paper, we apply these algorithms to the problem of SPECT reconstruction.

International audienceWe consider the problem of segmenting an image through the minimization of an energy criterion involving region and boundary functionals. We show that one can go from one class to the otherb y solving Poisson's orHelmholtz's equation with well-chosen boundary conditions. Using this equivalence, we study the case of a large class of region functionals by standard methods of the calculus of variations and derive the corresponding Euler-Lagrange equations. We revisit this problem using the notion of a shape derivative and show that the same equations can be elegantly derived without going through the unnatural step of converting the region integrals into boundary integrals. We also define a larger class of region functionals based on the estimation and comparison to a prototype of the probability density distribution of image features and show how the shape derivative tool allows us to easily compute the corresponding Gˆateaux derivatives and Euler-Lagrange equations. Finally we apply this new functional to the problem of regions segmentation in sequences of color images. We briefly describe our numerical scheme and show some experimental results