It¡¦s not easy to keep photographs clean in every day. A photograph is liable to be polluted by accumulating defects such as dusts, which can degrade the imaging quality. In the thesis, a method of image restoration is proposed for image polluted by multiplicative transmittance noise. The method is based on estimating the approximate autocorrelation function of the unpolluted image. This autocorrelation function is obtained by analyzing the relationship among the autocorrelation function for polluted image, unpolluted image and noise. Further more, the noisy image is restored by the property of the autocorrelation function. A polluted photograph in imaging system is modeled by a thin random screen against the original image. In this model, defects are Poisson-distribution and may be overlapped. Since transmittance effect of each defect is multiplicative, the transmittance of random screen is computed as a product of Poisson-distribution-centered random function. Then, the statistical autocorrelation function of random screen is accordingly computed. More specifically, we should rearrange image data as periodic signal to avoid insufficient data in computing the process autocorrelation function. The simulated polluted image is restored by the amplitude information from the estimated autocorrelation function of the original image. Simulating results is demonstrated that the RMS of the restored image computed with the polluted image is improved.

No description available.

A reconstrução tomográfica de imagens com ruído Poisson tem grandes aplicações em medicina nuclear. A demanda por informações mais complexas, como por exemplo, várias secções de um órgão, e a necessidade de reduzir a dosagem radioativa a que o paciente é submetido, requerem métodos adequados para a reconstrução de imagem com baixa contagem, no caso, baixa relação sinal/ruído. A abordagem estatística, utilizando a máxima verossimilhança (ML) e o algoritmo Expectation-Maximization (EM), produz melhores resultados do que os métodos tradicionais, pois incorpora a natureza estatística do ruído no seu modelo. A presente tese apresenta uma solução alternativa, considerando também o modelo de ruído Poisson, que produz resultados comparáveis ao do ML-EM, porém com custo computacional bem menor. A metodologia proposta consiste, basicamente, em se estimar as projeções considerando o modelo de formação das projeções ruidosas, antes do processo da reconstrução. São discutidos vários estimadores otimizados, inclusive Bayesianos. Em especial, é mostrado que a transformação de ruído Poisson em ruído aditivo Gaussiano e independente do sinal (transformação de Anscombe), conjugada à estimativa, produz bons resultados. Se as projeções puderem ser consideradas, aproximadamente, transformadas de Radon da imagem a ser reconstruída, então pode ser aplicado um dos métodos da transformada para a reconstrução tomográfica. Dentre estes métodos, o da aplicação direta da transformada de Fourier foi avaliado mais detalhadamente devido ao seu grande potencial para reconstruções rápidas com processamento vetorial e processamento paralelo. A avaliação do método proposto foi realizada através de simulações, onde foram geradas as imagens originais e as projeções com ruído Poisson. Os resultados foramcomparados com métodos clássicos como a filtragem-retroprojeção, o ART e o ML-EM. Em particular, a transformação de Anscombe conjungada ao estimador heurístico (filtro de Maeda), mostrou resultados próximos aos do ML-EM, porém com tempo de processamento bem menor. Os resultados obtidos mostram a viabilidade da presente proposta vir a ser utilizada em aplicações clínicas na medicina nuclear. / Tomographic reconstruction of images with Poisson noise is in important problem in nuclear medicine. The need for more complete information, like the reconstruction of several sections of an organ, and the necessity to reduce patient absorbed radioactivity, suggest better methods to reconstruct images with low-count and low signal-to-noise ratio. Statistical approaches using Maximum Likelihood (ML) and the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm lead to better results than classical methods, since ML-EM considers in its model the stochastic nature of the noise. This thesis presents an alternative solution, also using a Poisson noise model, that produces similar results as compared to ML-EM, but with much less computational cost. The proposed technique basically consists of projection estimation before reconstruction, taking into account a model for the formation of the noisy projections. Several optimal and Bayesian estimators are analysed. It is shown that the transformation of Poisson noise into Gaussian additive and independent noise (Anscombe Transformation), followed by estimation, yields good results. If the projection can be assumed as Radon transform of the image to be reconstructed, then it is possible to reconstruct using one of the transform methods. Among these methods, the Direct Fourier Method was analysed in detail, due to its applicability for fast reconstruction using array processors and parallel processing. Computer simulations were used in order to access this proposed technique. Phantoms and phantom projections with Poisson noise were generated. The results were compared with traditional methods like Filtering-Backprojection, Algebraic Rconstruction Technique (ART) and ML-EM. Specifically, the Anscombe transformation together with a heuristic estimator (Maeda\'s filter) produced results comparable to ML-EM, but spending only a fraction of the processing time.

A reconstrução tomográfica de imagens com ruído Poisson tem grandes aplicações em medicina nuclear. A demanda por informações mais complexas, como por exemplo, várias secções de um órgão, e a necessidade de reduzir a dosagem radioativa a que o paciente é submetido, requerem métodos adequados para a reconstrução de imagem com baixa contagem, no caso, baixa relação sinal/ruído. A abordagem estatística, utilizando a máxima verossimilhança (ML) e o algoritmo Expectation-Maximization (EM), produz melhores resultados do que os métodos tradicionais, pois incorpora a natureza estatística do ruído no seu modelo. A presente tese apresenta uma solução alternativa, considerando também o modelo de ruído Poisson, que produz resultados comparáveis ao do ML-EM, porém com custo computacional bem menor. A metodologia proposta consiste, basicamente, em se estimar as projeções considerando o modelo de formação das projeções ruidosas, antes do processo da reconstrução. São discutidos vários estimadores otimizados, inclusive Bayesianos. Em especial, é mostrado que a transformação de ruído Poisson em ruído aditivo Gaussiano e independente do sinal (transformação de Anscombe), conjugada à estimativa, produz bons resultados. Se as projeções puderem ser consideradas, aproximadamente, transformadas de Radon da imagem a ser reconstruída, então pode ser aplicado um dos métodos da transformada para a reconstrução tomográfica. Dentre estes métodos, o da aplicação direta da transformada de Fourier foi avaliado mais detalhadamente devido ao seu grande potencial para reconstruções rápidas com processamento vetorial e processamento paralelo. A avaliação do método proposto foi realizada através de simulações, onde foram geradas as imagens originais e as projeções com ruído Poisson. Os resultados foramcomparados com métodos clássicos como a filtragem-retroprojeção, o ART e o ML-EM. Em particular, a transformação de Anscombe conjungada ao estimador heurístico (filtro de Maeda), mostrou resultados próximos aos do ML-EM, porém com tempo de processamento bem menor. Os resultados obtidos mostram a viabilidade da presente proposta vir a ser utilizada em aplicações clínicas na medicina nuclear. / Tomographic reconstruction of images with Poisson noise is in important problem in nuclear medicine. The need for more complete information, like the reconstruction of several sections of an organ, and the necessity to reduce patient absorbed radioactivity, suggest better methods to reconstruct images with low-count and low signal-to-noise ratio. Statistical approaches using Maximum Likelihood (ML) and the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm lead to better results than classical methods, since ML-EM considers in its model the stochastic nature of the noise. This thesis presents an alternative solution, also using a Poisson noise model, that produces similar results as compared to ML-EM, but with much less computational cost. The proposed technique basically consists of projection estimation before reconstruction, taking into account a model for the formation of the noisy projections. Several optimal and Bayesian estimators are analysed. It is shown that the transformation of Poisson noise into Gaussian additive and independent noise (Anscombe Transformation), followed by estimation, yields good results. If the projection can be assumed as Radon transform of the image to be reconstructed, then it is possible to reconstruct using one of the transform methods. Among these methods, the Direct Fourier Method was analysed in detail, due to its applicability for fast reconstruction using array processors and parallel processing. Computer simulations were used in order to access this proposed technique. Phantoms and phantom projections with Poisson noise were generated. The results were compared with traditional methods like Filtering-Backprojection, Algebraic Rconstruction Technique (ART) and ML-EM. Specifically, the Anscombe transformation together with a heuristic estimator (Maeda\'s filter) produced results comparable to ML-EM, but spending only a fraction of the processing time.

The problem of reconstruction of digital images from their degraded measurements is regarded as a problem of central importance in various fields of engineering and imaging sciences. In such cases, the degradation is typically caused by the resolution limitations of an imaging device in use and/or by the destructive influence of measurement noise. Specifically, when the noise obeys a Poisson probability law, standard approaches to the problem of image reconstruction are based on using fixed-point algorithms which follow the methodology proposed by Richardson and Lucy in the beginning of the 1970s. The practice of using such methods, however, shows that their convergence properties tend to deteriorate at relatively high noise levels (which typically takes place in so-called low-count settings). This work introduces a novel method for de-noising and/or de-blurring of digital images that have been corrupted by Poisson noise. The proposed method is derived using the framework of MAP estimation, under the assumption that the image of interest can be sparsely represented in the domain of a properly designed linear transform. Consequently, a shrinkage-based iterative procedure is proposed, which guarantees the maximization of an associated maximum-a-posteriori criterion. It is shown in a series of both computer-simulated and real-life experiments that the proposed method outperforms a number of existing alternatives in terms of stability, precision, and computational efficiency.

The problem of reconstruction of digital images from their degraded measurements is regarded as a problem of central importance in various fields of engineering and imaging sciences. In such cases, the degradation is typically caused by the resolution limitations of an imaging device in use and/or by the destructive influence of measurement noise. Specifically, when the noise obeys a Poisson probability law, standard approaches to the problem of image reconstruction are based on using fixed-point algorithms which follow the methodology proposed by Richardson and Lucy in the beginning of the 1970s. The practice of using such methods, however, shows that their convergence properties tend to deteriorate at relatively high noise levels (which typically takes place in so-called low-count settings). This work introduces a novel method for de-noising and/or de-blurring of digital images that have been corrupted by Poisson noise. The proposed method is derived using the framework of MAP estimation, under the assumption that the image of interest can be sparsely represented in the domain of a properly designed linear transform. Consequently, a shrinkage-based iterative procedure is proposed, which guarantees the maximization of an associated maximum-a-posteriori criterion. It is shown in a series of both computer-simulated and real-life experiments that the proposed method outperforms a number of existing alternatives in terms of stability, precision, and computational efficiency.

No description available.

L'objectif de cette thèse est de proposer des méthodes fiables, efficaces et rapides pour minimiser des critères convexes apparaissant dans la résolution de problèmes inverses en imagerie. Ainsi, nous nous intéresserons à des problèmes de restauration/reconstruction lorsque les données sont dégradées par un opérateur linéaire et un bruit qui peut être non additif. La fiabilité de la méthode sera assurée par l'utilisation d'algorithmes proximaux dont la convergence est garantie lorsqu'il s'agit de minimiser des critères convexes. La quête d'efficacité impliquera le choix d'un critère adapté aux caractéristiques du bruit, à l'opérateur linéaire et au type d'image à reconstruire. En particulier, nous utiliserons des termes de régularisation basés sur la variation totale et/ou favorisant la parcimonie des coefficients du signal recherché dans une trame. L'utilisation de trames nous amènera à considérer deux approches : une formulation du critère à l'analyse et une formulation du critère à la synthèse. De plus, nous étendrons les algorithmes proximaux et leurs preuves de convergence aux cas de problèmes inverses multicomposantes. La recherche de la rapidité de traitement se traduira par l'utilisation d'algorithmes proximaux parallélisables. Les résultats théoriques obtenus seront illustrés sur différents types de problèmes inverses de grandes tailles comme la restauration d'images mais aussi la stéréoscopie, l'imagerie multispectrale, la décomposition en composantes de texture et de géométrie. Une application attirera plus particulièrement notre attention ; il s'agit de la reconstruction de l'activité dynamique en Tomographie par Emission de Positrons (TEP) qui constitue un problème inverse difficile mettant en jeu un opérateur de projection et un bruit de Poisson dégradant fortement les données observées. Pour optimiser la qualité de reconstruction, nous exploiterons les caractéristiques spatio-temporelles de l'activité dans les tissus / The objective of this work is to propose reliable, efficient and fast methods for minimizing convex criteria, that are found in inverse problems for imagery. We focus on restoration/reconstruction problems when data is degraded with both a linear operator and noise, where the latter is not assumed to be necessarily additive.The methods reliability is ensured through the use of proximal algorithms, the convergence of which is guaranteed when a convex criterion is considered. Efficiency is sought through the choice of criteria adapted to the noise characteristics, the linear operators and the image specificities. Of particular interest are regularization terms based on total variation and/or sparsity of signal frame coefficients. As a consequence of the use of frames, two approaches are investigated, depending on whether the analysis or the synthesis formulation is chosen. Fast processing requirements lead us to consider proximal algorithms with a parallel structure. Theoretical results are illustrated on several large size inverse problems arising in image restoration, stereoscopy, multi-spectral imagery and decomposition into texture and geometry components. We focus on a particular application, namely Positron Emission Tomography (PET), which is particularly difficult because of the presence of a projection operator combined with Poisson noise, leading to highly corrupted data. To optimize the quality of the reconstruction, we make use of the spatio-temporal characteristics of brain tissue activity

[pt] No presente trabalho faz-se uma análise sobre quantidades estatísticas de cadeias lineares e não lineares na situação em que o fluxo de calor que atravessa estes sistemas encontra-se no regime estacionário. A discussão inicial é feita sobre um modelo geral de cadeia linear, com acoplamentos arbitrários entre suas partículas e alimentada por reservatórios gaussianos. Uma análise detalhada sobre quantidades como fluxo de calor e distribuição de temperaturas do sistema é feita, onde todas as expressões analíticas correspondentes a estas quantidades são demonstradas e comparadas com resultados numéricos. Estudam-se então as mudanças quantitativas e qualitativas apresentadas pelas grandezas supracitadas quando modificam-se os acoplamentos de ancoragem entre o sistema e os reservatórios. Verifica-se que as mudanças nos perfis de temperaturas estão relacionadas aos extremos dos cumulantes do fluxo de calor, o que motiva uma investigação sobre a possível ocorrência de uma transição de fase no sistema. Buscando encontrar possíveis comportamentos críticos, definem-se as funções de correlação entre as velocidades quadráticas e de velocidades entre pares de partículas. A partir destas definições é possível verificar o comprimento de correlação associado à estas grandezas. Este estudo leva a um dos pontos mais interessantes do trabalho, onde conectam-se as mudanças apresentadas por grandezas do sistema como quantidades estatísticas do fluxo de calor, distribuição de temperaturas do sistema e os seus modos vibracionais frente às mudanças nos acoplamentos de ancoragem com os reservatórios. Ao estudar o fenômeno de condução de calor de uma forma mais realística e rigorosa, é imprescindível acrescentar interações não-lineares na cadeia. Considerando que a solução exata para este tipo de sistema não pode ser obtida, utiliza-se teoria de perturbação e outras ferramentas matemáticas para discutir as principais caracterísiticas do fluxo de calor em uma cadeia anarmônica. A técnica desenvolvida nesta tese permite calcular o fluxo de calor em cadeias de tamanho arbitrário, e é válida para sistemas sob ação de reservatórios de qualquer natureza. Aplica-se o método para cadeias alimentadas por reservatórios gaussianos e poissonianos, de onde verifica-se o impacto das não linearidades sobre estes sistemas e comparam-se os resultados obtidos com o caso linear. Para a análise em que o reservatório poissoniano injeta energia no sistema, ilustra-se o efeito de cumulantes de ordem superior do ruído descontínuo sobre o fluxo de calor e como estes novos elementos podem levar a resultados que a primeira vista parecem fisicamente incoerentes. / [en] In the present work I make an analysis about statistical quantities for linear and nonlinear chains in the stationary state. We start the discussion from a general linear model, with arbitrary couplings and connected to Gaussian reservoirs. A detailed analysis for quantities like heat ow and site temperatures is obtained, where all analytical expressions respective to those quantities are derived and a compared with numerical results. Then I study the quantitative and qualitative changes presented by the aforementioned quantities when the pinnings related to the reservoirs are modified. The changes in temperature profiles are related with the extrema of heat flux cumulants, motivating the investigation of whether phase transitions in the chain might occur. In order to investigate possible critical behaviors, I define velocity correlation functions between pair particles and squared velocities correlation functions. From where, one is able to estabilish a correlation length respective to these quantities. This study leads to one of the most remarkable achievements of this work, which is the connection made between the changes presented by some important statistical quantities of heat flux, the system s temperature, vibrational modes and the reservoirs pinnings. By treating the phenomenon of heat conduction in a more realistic and rigorous way, I develop a study to describe the transport properties in an anharmonic chain. Pondering that an exact solution for this sort of system is unfeasible, I use perturbation theory and other mathematical tools to discuss the main features of heat flux in a nonlinear chain. The technique developed throughout this thesis allows one to compute the heat current for a chain of arbitrary size, and is valid for systems under in fluence of reservoirs of any nature. We apply the method for chains governed by Gaussian and Poissonian reservoirs, verifying the impact of the nonlinearities over those systems, and comparing the obtained results to the linear case. In the case where there is a Poissonian bath injecting energy into the system, I shed some light on the effects of higher order cumulants related to the discontinous noise in the heat flux and I show how these new elements can lead to some results that at first glance seem physically incoherents.

We address the problem of image denoising for additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN), Poisson noise, and Chi-squared noise scenarios. Thermal noise in electronic circuitry in camera hardware can be modeled as AWGN. Poisson noise is used to model the randomness associated with photon counting during image acquisition. Chi-squared noise statistics are appropriate in imaging modalities such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). AWGN is additive, while Poisson noise is neither additive nor multiplicative. Although Chi-squared noise is derived from AWGN statistics, it is non-additive. Mean-square error (MSE) is the most widely used metric to quantify denoising performance. In parametric denoising approaches, the optimal parameters of the denoising function are chosen by employing a minimum mean-square-error (MMSE) criterion. However, the dependence of MSE on the noise-free signal makes MSE computation infeasible in practical scenarios. We circumvent the problem by adopting an MSE estimation approach. The ground-truth-independent estimates of MSE are Stein’s unbiased risk estimate (SURE), Poisson unbiased risk estimate (PURE) and Chi-square unbiased risk estimate (CURE) for AWGN, Poison and Chi-square noise models, respectively. The denoising function is optimized to achieve maximum noise suppression by minimizing the MSE estimates. We have chosen the bilateral filter as the denoising function. Bilateral filter is a nonlinear edge-preserving smoother. The performance of the bilateral filter is governed by the choice of its parameters, which can be optimized to minimize the MSE or its estimate. However, in practical scenarios, MSE cannot be computed due to inaccessibility of the noise-free image. We derive SURE, PURE, and CURE in the context of bilateral filtering and compute the parameters of the bilateral filter that yield the minimum cost (SURE/PURE/CURE). On processing the noisy input with bilateral filter whose optimal parameters are chosen by minimizing MSE estimates (SURE/PURE/CURE), we obtain the estimate closest to the ground truth. We denote the bilateral filter with optimal parameters as SURE-optimal bilateral filter (SOBF), PURE-optimal bilateral filter (POBF) and CURE-optimal bilateral filter (COBF) for AWGN, Poisson and Chi-Squared noise scenarios, respectively. In addition to the globally optimal bilateral filters (SOBF and POBF), we propose spatially adaptive bilateral filter variants, namely, SURE-optimal patch-based bilateral filter (SPBF) and PURE-optimal patch-based bilateral filter (PPBF). SPBF and PPBF yield significant improvements in performance and preserve edges better when compared with their globally-optimal counterparts, SOBF and POBF, respectively. We also propose the SURE-optimal multiresolution bilateral filter (SMBF) where we couple SOBF with wavelet thresholding. For Poisson noise suppression, we propose PURE-optimal multiresolution bilateral filter (PMBF), which is the Poisson counterpart of SMBF. We com-pare the performance of SMBF and PMBF with the state-of-the-art denoising algorithms for AWGN and Poisson noise, respectively. The proposed multiresolution-based bilateral filtering techniques yield denoising performance that is competent with that of the state-of-the-art techniques.