Image Denoising using Wavelet Transform
Method
Vikas Gupta, Rajesh Mahle, Raviprakash S Shriwas
 Because of computers is in discrete in nature, so computer programs
Abstract—Removing noise from the original signal is still a
challenging job for researchers. There have been several numbers
of published algorithms and each target to remove noise from
original signal. This paper presents a result of some significant
work in the area of image denoising it means we explore
denoising of images using several thresholding methods such as
SureShrink, VisuShrink and BayesShrink. Here we put results of
different approaches of wavelet based image denoising methods.
To find best method for image denoising is still a valid challenge
at the crossing of functional analysis and statistics. Here we
extend the existing technique and providing a comprehensive
evaluation of the proposed method. Here the results based on
various types of noise, such as Gaussian, Poisson’s, Salt and
Pepper, and Speckle performed in this paper. SNR (signal to
noise ratio) and mean square error (MSE) are as a measure of the
quality of denoising was preferred. Wavelet algorithms are very
useful tool for signal processing such as image compression and
image denoising. The main aim is to show the result of wavelet
coefficients in the new basis, the noise can be minimize or
removed from the data.
Keyword: - Wavelet transforms, BayesInvariant, SureShrink,
and VisuShrink.
I. INTRODUCTION
W AVELET transforms help us to represent signals with a high
degree of sparsity. Principle behind a non-linear wavelet
based signal estimation method called as wavelet denoising.
During transmission generally the image is corrupted by noise which
is not easily eliminated in image processing. The space field is data
operation method carried on the original image, and processes the
image grey value, for example neighborhood average method, wiener
filter and so on. Then the aim of eliminating noise from noisy image
is achieved by inverse wavelet transformation [1] [2]. There are two
main types of wavelet transform - continuous wavelet transform and
discrete wavelet transform [2].
Vikas Gupta is the H.O.D. of ECE Dept., TIT, Rajiv Gandhi Technical
University, Bhopal, M.P., India. (Email: vgup24@yahoo.com); phone: +
919424467817.
Rajesh Mahle is the Asst. Prof. of ECE Dept., TIT, Rajiv Gandhi
Technical University, Bhopal, M.P., India. (Email: rajeshmahle@gmail.com);
Phone: +917898064685.
Raviprakash S Shriwash is the ME Student of ECE Dept., TIT, Rajiv
Gandhi Technical University, Bhopal, M.P., India. (Corresponding author to
provide; email: ravi.shriwas@gmail.com); Phone: +919960987745.
978-1-4673-5999-3/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE
use the discrete wavelet transform. The discrete transform is most
efficient from the computational point of view. Here we will mostly
deal with the modeling of the wavelet transform coefficients of
original images. The denoising of original image corrupted by
Gaussian noise is a common problem in image processing. The
wavelet transform has become an important tool for such problem. So
we can say that wavelets provide a framework for signal
decomposition in the form of a sequence of signals known as
approximation signals with decreasing resolution supplemented by a
sequence of additional touches called details [6] [7]. The methods
based on wavelet representations yield very simple algorithms that
are often more powerful and easy to work with than traditional
methods of function estimation [11]. A digital image is composed of
a finite number of elements, each elements has a particular location
and value. These elements are called as picture elements or image
elements or pels or pixels. Pixel is the term most widely used to
represent the elements of a digital image. A digital image is a discrete
two-dimensional function (2D function), function f(x, y), which has
been quantized over its domain and range. Without loss of generality,
it will be considered that the image is rectangular in shape, consisting
of Y rows & X columns.
II. WHY WAVELET?
The wavelet coefficients suggest that small coefficients are
dominated by noise; coefficients with a maximum absolute
value carry more signal information than noise. Replacing
noisy coefficients by 0 (zero) and an inverse wavelet transform
may lead to a reconstruction that has less amount of noise.
Hard threshold is a “kill or keep” procedure and is more
intuitively appealing, the alternative, soft thresholding shrinks
coefficients above the threshold in absolute value. While at
first sight hard thresholding may seem to be natural, the
continuity of soft thresholding has some advantages.
Sometimes, noise coefficients may pass the hard threshold and
appear as annoying ’blips’ in the output. A small threshold
may produce a result close to the input value, but the result
may still be noisy. A large threshold on the other hand, yields a
signal with a large number of zero coefficients. Wavelet
denoising are use to remove the noise present in the signal
while preserving the signal characteristics as it is, regardless of
its frequency content. It contains three steps: 1st a linear
forward wavelet transform, 2nd is nonlinear thresholding step
and 3rd is linear inverse wavelet transform. As we know that
Wavelet denoising must not be confused with smoothing;
because smoothing only removes the high frequencies and
retains the lower ones. Wavelet shrinkage is one type of a non-
linear process and is what distinguishes it from entire linear
denoising technique such as least squares. As will be
explained, wavelet shrinkage depends heavily on the choice of
a thresholding parameter and the choice of this threshold
determines, to a great extent the efficacy of denoising. As we
know that the Image Denoising facing so many Problem.
Image denoising is different from image enhancement. As
Gonzalez and Woods [1] explain, image enhancement is an
objective process, whereas image denoising is a subjective
process. Image enhancement, on the other hand, involves
manipulation of the image characteristics to make it more
appealing to the human eye. There is some overlap between
the two processes. Image denoising is a restoration process,
where attempts are made to recover an image that has been
degraded by using prior knowledge of the degradation process.
SureShrink: - Let μ = (μi: i=1,…. d) be a length-d vector, and
let x = {xi} (with xi distributed as N(μi,1)) be multivariate
normal observations with mean vector μ. Let µ= µ(x) be a fixed
estimate of μ based on the observations x. SURE (Stein’s
unbiased Risk Estimator) is a method for estimating the loss
||µ - µ||2 in an unbiased fashion. In our case  is the soft
threshold estimator. it ( x)  nt ( xi ) We apply Stein’s result to
get an unbiased estimate of the risk E ||  t ( x)   ||2 . The
above optimization problem is computationally
straightforward. Without loss of generality, we can reorder x in
order of increasing |xi|. Then on intervals of t that lie between
two values of |xi|, SURE (t) is strictly increasing. Therefore the
minimum value of tS is one of the data values |xi|. There are
only d values and the threshold can be obtained using O (d
log(d)) computations.
VisuShrink: - VisuShrink is thresholding by applying the
Universal threshold proposed by Donoho and Johnstone [3].
This threshold is given by  2 logM where σ is the noise
variance and M is the number of pixels in the image. It is
proved in [3] that the maximum of any M values iid as N (0,
σ2) will be smaller than the universal threshold with high
probability, with the probability approaching 1 as M values
increases. Thus, with high probability, a pure noise signal is
estimated as being identically zero. This is because the
universal threshold (UT) is derived under the constraint that
with high probability the estimate should be at least as smooth
as the signal. So the UT tends to be high for large values of M,
killing many signal coefficients along with the noise.
Therefore the threshold does not adapt well to discontinuities
in the signal.
III. IMPLEMENTATION METHODOLOGY
From the data flow diagram we can say that, when noise is add
to the image such image called noisy image. Pre filter process
is done by using forward wavelet transform, then we determine
threshold value internally, after determine threshold
Start
Input Image Add Noises

Neigh Shrink: - Chen et al. proposed a wavelet-domain image

thresholding scheme by incorporating neighboring
coefficients, namely Neigh Shrink [4]. The method Neigh Noisy Image
Shrink threshold is the wavelet coefficients according to the
magnitude of the squared sum of all the wavelet coefficients,
i.e., the local energy, within the neighborhood window. The Forward Wavelet
Pre Filter
neighborhood window size may be 3×3, 5×5, 7×7, 9×9, etc. Transform
But, the authors have already demonstrated through the results
that the 3×3 window is the best among all window sizes. The
shrinkage function for Neigh Shrink of any arbitrary 3×3 Thresolding Inverse Wavelet
window centered at (i,j) is expressed as: Transform

  2ij 
ij  1  2  Post Filter
 S
 ij 

Where, UT is the universal threshold and Sij2 is the squared Denoised Image
sum of all wavelet coefficients in the respective 3×3 window
given by:

j 1 i 1 End
Sij 2    1Y 2 mn
n  j m i
Figure 1: Implementation flow diagram
Here, + sign at the end of the formula means to keep the value thresholding is done by using inverse wavelet transform.
positive values while setting it to zero when it is negative. The Finally post filter is done to get denoised image.
estimated center wavelet coefficient Fij is then calculated from
its noisy counterpart Yij as:

Fij  ijYij
 A. BAYES INVARIANT IMPLEMENTATION 4.Get the de-noise image using global thresholding
In Bayes Invariant technique the image is first divided into option.
four parts a, h, v and d, representing the approximate,
horizontal, vertical and diagonal components. Table 2: SureShrink
MATLAB BayesInvariant Implementation Steps:
Denoising Method
Input Type of
SureShrink
1. Use ddencmp to get the denoising co-efficient Image Noise
PSNR MSE
2. Define the Noise Variance and adding Gaussian noise Salt & pepper 44.67 0.05
3. Define type of wavelet used and the number of scales Image 1 Gaussian 35.03 0.10
in the wavelet decomp (Chrysanthemum.jpg) Speckle 39.62 0.04
4. Do the wavelet decomposition Poisson 39.79 0.03
5. Find the bayes co-efficient using bayesC function. Salt & pepper 44.11 0.05
6. Calculating sigma hat Image 2 Gaussian 34.30 0.09
7. Reconstructing the image from the Bayes-threshold (Hydrangeas.jpg) Speckle 40.37 0.04
wavelet coefficients Poisson 41.62 0.03
8. Finally de-noise the image using global thresholding Salt & pepper 39.66 0.04
option by wavefast function. Image 3 Gaussian 34.43 0.08
(Desert.jpg) Speckle 40.33 0.04
Poisson 42.01 0.03
Table 1: Bayes Invarient
Salt & pepper 36.95 0.06
Denoising Method Image 4 Gaussian 32.82 0.09
Input Type of (Koala.jpg) Speckle 36.84 0.05
Bayes Invarient
Image Noise
PSNR MSE Poisson 37.57 0.05
Salt & pepper 45.79 0.03 Salt & pepper 35.20 0.06
Image 1 Gaussian 49.41 0.01 Image 5 Gaussian 33.75 0.07
(Chrysanthemum.jpg) Speckle 49.42 0.03 (Penguins.jpg) Speckle 36.72 0.05
Poisson 49.41 0.01 Poisson 37.46 0.07
Salt & pepper 49.33 0.01
Image 2 Gaussian 49.43 0.01
(Hydrangeas.jpg) Speckle 49.40 0.03 C. VISUSHRINK IMPLEMENTATION
Poisson 49.50 0.01
Salt & pepper 45.82 0.03
VisuShrink is a technique that is the combination of soft
Image 3 Gaussian 49.47 0.01 thresholding combined with SureShrink technique. However
(Desert.jpg) Speckle 45.83 0.03 here the threshold is given by  2log M where σ is the noise
Poisson 45.88 0.01 variance and M is the number of pixels in the image. Here the
Salt & pepper 43.23 0.03
input image is first divided into a, h, v and d, representing the
Image 4 Gaussian 43.24 0.03
(Koala.jpg) Speckle 43.19 0.03
approximate, horizontal, vertical and diagonal components.
Poisson 43.21 0.03 Then threshold is computed and each pixel of h, v and d is
Salt & pepper 45.44 0.03 compared with the calculated threshold. If a particular pixel
Image 5 Gaussian 45.44 0.03 value is greater than the threshold it is replaced by the mean of
(Penguins.jpg) Speckle 45.52 0.03 the 3x3 neighborhood of that pixel. This is gives us h’, v’ and
Poisson 45.37 0.03 d’ components which is then combined with a, to get image to
which 1D DWT is applied to get the final denoised image.
MATLAB VisuShrink Implementation Steps:
B. SURESHINK IMPLEMENTATION 1.Use ddencmp to get the denoising co-efficients.
SureShrink method is very fast as compared to VisuShrink. 2.Define the Noise Variance and adding Gaussian noise
MATLAB SureShrink Implementation Steps: 3.Define the type of wavelet(filter bank) used and the
1.Find the threshold for SureShrink method by: number of scales in the wavelet decomp
 First sort the image pixels in descending order 4.Do the wavelet decomposition Call the command
 Calculate the cumulative sum wavetrans2 which calculate the 2nd order coefficient.
 Calculate the threshold by taking sqrt of the 5.Calculate sigma from smallest scale only
best pixels 6.Make the threshold by using soft-thresholding of
2.Now find the places where pixels are more than wavelet coefficients
threshold 7.Now find the places where pixels are more than
3.Now apply the denoising by replacing the pixels with threshold
the mean of the 3x3 neighborhood of that pixel, if a 8.Now apply the denoising by replacing the pixels with
particular pixel value is greater than the threshold the mean of the 3x3 neighborhood of that pixel, if a
particular pixel value is greater than the threshold
 Table 3: VisuShrink variance of the noise or the noise model. Thus, most of the
image denoising algorithms consider known variance of the
noise and the noise model to compare the performance with
Denoising Method
Input Type of different image denoising algorithms. Gaussian Noise with
VisuShrink
Image Noise different variance values is added in the natural images to test
PSNR MSE
the performance of the image denoising algorithm.
Salt & pepper 21.22 0.17
Image 1 Gaussian 21.38 0.17 From the obtained results it is visible that out of the
(Chrysanthemum.jpg) Speckle 22.32 0.16 BayesInvariant thresholding technique in comparison has the
Poisson 21.95 0.16 highest PSNR values and minimum MMSE. SureShrink
Salt & pepper 33.56 0.05 technique has high PSNR and comparatively high MMSE to
Image 2 Gaussian 30.32 0.07 BayesInvariant thresholding technique. On the other hand
(Hydrangeas.jpg) Speckle 36.69 0.04 VisuShrink method takes highest computation time and has
Poisson 35.61 0.04 lowest PSNR and much Higher MMSE vales. An important
Salt & pepper 33.98 0.05 point to note is that although SureShrink performed a little
Image 3 Gaussian 32.08 0.06 poor than BayesInvariant based on PSNR and MMSE
(Desert.jpg) Speckle 33.94 0.05 denoising, it adapts well to sharp discontinuities in the image.
Poisson 34.15 0.06 Thus to summarize BayesInvariant thresholding technique has
Salt & pepper 34.75 0.06 best performance, SureShrink is better whereas VisuShrink is
Image 4 Gaussian 29.94 0.08 comparatively poor in performance.
(Koala.jpg) Speckle 33.45 0.06
To implement other shrink techniques such as Bivariate Shrink
Poisson 33.41 0.06
Method, which is good.
Salt & pepper 37.71 0.04
Image 5 Gaussian 29.63 0.08
To focus on building robust statistical models of non-
(Penguins.jpg) Speckle 32.20 0.06 orthogonal wavelet coefficients based on their intra scale and
Poisson 33.09 0.06 inter scale correlations. Such models can be more effectively
used for image denoising and compression.

D. OBSERVATION TABLE REFERENCES

Using matlab image processing and wavelet toolbox, the
results obtained for different images by using VisuShrink,
SureShrink and BayesInvariant image denoising techniques.
The outcome is totally depending on comparison of all
methods, and the simulated results in the term of PSNR (peak
signal to noise ratio) and MMSE (minimum mean square
error).
In our project we use 4 types of different noise, 3 types of
thresholding, and 2 types of wavelet transform. So we got total
24 results. i.e. (4 * 3 * 2 = 24). Table given below shows the
comparison of the three methods used for image denoising for
five different input images.
IV. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE
An image is often corrupted by noise during its acquisition and
transmission. Wavelet thresholding is an effective method of
denoising noisy signals. In this work, we have proposed a
comparison of three wavelet based image denoising techniques
which includes two soft thresholding schemes VisuShrink &
SureShrink and BayesInvariant thresholding, following the
criterion of their efficiency in image denoising applications.
Performance of denoising algorithms is measured using
quantitative performance measures such as peak signal-to-
noise ratio (PSNR), minimum mean square error (MMSE) as
well as in terms of visual quality of the images. Many of the
current techniques assume the noise model to be Gaussian,
which in reality due to the varied nature and sources of noise
may not always hold true. An ideal denoising procedure
requires a priori knowledge of the noise, whereas a practical
procedure may not have the required information about the
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