In this paper, we suggest a variational model for optic flow computation based on non-linearised and higher order constancy assumptions. Besides the common grey value constancy assumption, also gradient constancy, as well as the constancy of the Hessian and the Laplacian are proposed. Since the model strictly refrains from a linearisation of these assumptions, it is also capable to deal with large displacements. For the minimisation of the rather complex energy functional, we present an efficient numerical scheme employing two nested fixed point iterations. Following a coarse-to-fine strategy it turns out that there is a theoretical foundation of so-called warping techniques hitherto justified only on an experimental basis. Since our algorithm consists of the integration of various concepts, ranging from different constancy assumptions to numerical implementation issues, a detailed account of the effect of each of these concepts is included in the experimental section. The superior performance of the proposed method shows up by significantly smaller estimation errors when compared to previous techniques. Further experiments also confirm excellent robustness under noise and insensitivity to parameter variations.

This paper provides a mathematical analysis of higher order variational methods and nonlinear diffusion filtering for image denoising. Besides the average grey value, it is shown that higher order diffusion filters preserve higher moments of the initial data. While a maximumminimum principle in general does not hold for higher order filters, we derive stability in the 2-norm in the continuous and discrete setting. Considering the filters in terms of forward and backward diffusion, one can explain how not only the preservation, but also the enhancement of certain features in the given data is possible. Numerical results show the improved denoising capabilities of higher order filtering compared to the classical methods.

Splines play an important role as solutions of various interpolation and approximation problems that minimize special functionals in some smoothness spaces. In this paper, we show in a strictly discrete setting that splines of degree m−1 solve also a minimization problem with quadratic data term and m-th order total variation (TV) regularization term. In contrast to problems with quadratic regularization terms involving m-th order derivatives, the spline knots are not known in advance but depend on the input data and the regularization parameter λ. More precisely, the spline knots are determined by the contact points of the m-th discrete antiderivative of the solution with the tube of width 2λ around the m-th discrete antiderivative of the input data. We point out that the dual formulation of our minimization problem can be considered as support vector regression problem in the discrete counterpart of the Sobolev space W m 2,0 . From this point of view, the solution of our minimization problem has a sparse representation in terms of discrete fundamental splines.

Matrix fields are becoming increasingly important in digital imaging. In order to perform shape analysis, enhancement or segmentation of such matrix fields, appropriate image processing tools must be developed. This paper extends fundamental morphological operations to the setting of matrices, in the literature sometimes referred to as tensors despite the fact that matrices are only rank two tensors. The goal of this paper is to introduce and explore two approaches to mathematical morphology for matrix-valued data: One is based on a partial ordering, the other utilises nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs). We start by presenting definitions for the maximum and minimum of a set of symmetric matrices since these notions are the cornerstones of the morphological operations. Our first approach is based on the Loewner ordering for symmetric matrices, and is in contrast to the unsatisfactory component-wise techniques. The notions of maximum and minimum deduced from the Loewner ordering satisfy desirable properties such as rotation invariance, preservation of positive semidefiniteness, and continuous dependence on the input data. These properties are also shared by the dilation and erosion processes governed by a novel nonlinear system of PDEs we are proposing for our second approach to morphology on matrix data. These PDEs are a suitable counterpart of the nonlinear equations known from scalar continuous-scale morphology. Both approaches incorporate information simultaneously from all matrix channels rather than treating them independently. In experiments on artificial and real medical positive semidefinite matrix-valued images we contrast the resulting notions of erosion, dilation, opening, closing, top hats, morphological derivatives, and shock filters stemming from these two alternatives. Using a ball shaped structuring element we illustrate the properties and performance of our ordering-or PDE-driven morphological operators for matrix-valued data.

We propose a discrete variational approach for image smoothing consisting of nonlocal data and smoothness contraints that penalise general dissimilarity measures defined on image patches. One of such dissimilarity measures is the weighted 2 distance between patches. In such a case we derive an iterative neighbourhood filter that induces a new similarity measure in the photometric domain. It can be regarded as an extended patch similarity measure that evaluates not only the patch similarity of two chosen pixels, but also the similarity of their corresponding neighbours. This leads to a more robust smoothing process since the pixels selected for averaging are more coherent with the local image structure. The suggested approach includes two recently proposed filters as special cases: The NLmeans filter of Buades et al. and the NDS filter of Mrázek et al. In fact, the approach introduced here can be considered as a generalisation of the latter filter. We evaluate our method for the task of denoising greyscale and colour images degraded by Gaussian and impulse noise, demonstrating that it compares very well to other more sophisticated patch-based approaches.

Coherence-enhancing diffusion filtering is a striking application of the structure tensor concept in image processing. The technique deals with the problem of completion of interrupted lines and enhancement of flow-like features in images. The completion of line-like structures is also a major concern in diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI). This medical image acquisition technique outputs a 3D matrix field of symmetric 3 × 3-matrices, and it helps to visualise, for example, the nerve fibers in brain tissue. As any physical measurement DT-MRI is subjected to errors causing faulty representations of the tissue corrupted by noise and with visually interrupted lines or fibers. In this paper we address that problem by proposing a coherenceenhancing diffusion filtering methodology for matrix fields. The approach is based on a generic structure tensor concept for matrix fields that relies on the operator-algebraic properties of symmetric matrices, rather than their channel-wise treatment of earlier proposals. Numerical experiments with artificial and real DT-MRI data confirm the gap-closing and flow-enhancing qualities of the technique presented.

We are interested in minimizing functionals with 2 data and gradient fitting term and 1 regularization term with higher order derivatives in a discrete setting. We examine the structure of the solution in 1D by reformulating the original problem into a contact problem which can be solved by dual optimization techniques. The solution turns out to be a 'smooth' discrete polynomial spline whose knots coincide with the contact points while its counterpart in the contact problem is a discrete version of a spline with higher defect and contact points as knots. In 2D we modify Chambolle's algorithm to solve the minimization problem with the 1 norm of interacting second order partial derivatives as regularization term. We show that the algorithm can be implemented efficiently by applying the fast cosine transform. We demonstrate by numerical denoising examples that the 2 gradient fitting term can be used to avoid both edge blurring and staircasing effects.

Abstract.We investigate the use of fractional powers of the Laplacian for signal and image simplification. We focus both on their corresponding variational techniques and parabolic pseudodifferential equations. We perform a detailed study of the regularisation properties of energy functionals, where the smoothness term consists of various linear combinations of fractional derivatives. The associated parabolic pseudodifferential equations with constant coefficients are providing the link to linear scale-space theory. These encompass the well-known α-scale-spaces, even those with parameter values α > 1 known to violate common maximumminimum principles. Nevertheless, we show that it is possible to construct positivity-preserving combinations of high and low-order filters. Numerical experiments in this direction indicate that non-integral orders play an essential role in this construction. The paper reveals the close relation between continuous and semi-discrete filters, and by that helps to facilitate efficient implementations. In additional numerical experiments we compare the variance decay rates for white noise and edge signals through the action of different filter classes.