Dyadic Curvelet Transform (DClet) for Image Noise Reduction

Paper:

Dyadic Curvelet Transform (DClet) for Image Noise Reduction

Marjan Sedighi Anaraki∗ , Fangyan Dong∗ , Hajime Nobuhara∗∗ , and Kaoru Hirota∗
∗ Dept. of Computational Intelligence and Systems Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology
G3-49, 4259 Nagatsuta, Midori-ku, Yokohama 226-8502, Japan
E-mail: {msedighi, tou, hirota}@hrt.dis.titech.ac.jp
∗∗ Dept. of Intelligent Interaction Technologies, University of Tsukuba

1-1-1 Tennoudai, Tsukuba science city, Ibaraki 305-8573, Japan

E-mail: nobuhara@iit.tsukuba.ac.jp
[Received January 15, 2007; accepted March 20, 2007]

Dyadic Curvelet transform (DClet) is proposed as a
tool for image processing and computer vision. It is an
extended curvelet transform that solves the problem
of conventional curvelet, of decomposition into compo-
nents at different scales. It provides simplicity, dyadic
scales, and absence of redundancy for analysis and
synthesis objects with discontinuities along curves, i.e.,
edges via directional basis functions. The performance
of the proposed method is evaluated by removing
Gaussian, Speckles, and Random noises from different
noisy standard images. Average 26.71 dB Peak Signal
to Noise Ratio (PSNR) compared to 25.87 dB via the
wavelet transform is evidence that the DClet outper-
forms the wavelet transform for removing noise. The
proposed method is robust, which makes it suitable
for biomedical applications. It is a candidate for gray
and color image enhancement and applicable for com-
pression or efficient coding in which critical sampling
might be relevant.
Keywords: image processing, curvelet, noise reduction,
wavelet, ridgelet
1. Introduction
age, in addition to refining the scale space viewpoint by
adding orientation. Separating the object into a series of
dyadic scales makes it applicable for different fields in
image processing and computer vision.
It is a multiscale transform with square or rectangu-
lar sampling set of detail coefficients to make directional
data using the Finite RIdgelet Transform (FRIT) [11, 12]
as the non-redundant building block with a spatial band
pass filtering operation to dyadic scales that uses the Fi-
nite RAdon Transform (FRAT) [13–15].
Noise reduction with the goal of minimizing the Mean
Square Error (MSE) [16–19] is used for evaluating per-
formance of the DClet. It is applied to a set of gray scale
images with size N × N = 256 × 256. Images are em-
bedded in Gaussian white noise, Random and Speckles
noises. Lower MSE is exhibited on images, across a range
of underlying noise levels. Evidence is presented that the
new approach performs as well as mature wavelet noise
reduction. The comparison considers thresholding of the
wavelet transform.
The Dyadic Curvelet Transform is proposed in Sec-
tion 2. In Section 3 noise reduction based on the DClet
is reviewed. The experimental results are shown in Sec-
tion 4, and finally it is concluded with some discussions
and an outlook.

Over the last decade, there has been abundant inter-

est in wavelet methods for different applications in image 2. Dyadic Curvelet Transform (DClet)
processing and computer vision. Initial efforts included
some ideas like thresholding of the orthogonal wavelet co- The idea of curvelets is representing a curve as a super-
efficients for noise removal, followed by reconstruction. position of functions of various lengths and widths obey-
Later efforts find that substantial improvements in percep- ing the scaling law width ≈ length2 . This can be done by
tual quality can be obtained by translation invariant meth- first decomposing of the image into subbands, i.e., sep-
ods based on contourlet [1, 2], curvelet [3–7], and discrete arating the object into a series of disjoint scales. Each
version of the curvelet transform [8]. Curvelet, that is scale is then analyzed by means of a local ridgelet trans-
ideally suited for detection and synthesizing curved edges form that is precisely the application of one dimensional
and lines, decomposes the image into a series of disjoint wavelet transform to slices of the radon transform with the
scales of wavelet bands and analyses each band by a local constant angular variable. This algorithm decomposes an
ridgelet transform [9, 10] with a redundancy factor equal N × N image f as a superposition of form:
to four.
As a digital transform with low redundancy might be N/2J N/2J
f (x, y) = ∑ (LL)W J (k , k )ψ J
more desirable, an extended curvelet transform named ∑ f 1 2 k1 ,k2 (x, y)
k1 =1 k2 =1
Dyadic Curvelet transform (DClet) is proposed. The fun- (1)
J N/2 j N/2 j
+∑ ∑ (•)W j (k , k )ψ j
∑ k1 ,k2 (x, y)
damental idea behind the DClet is to propose a dyadic f 1 2
digital transform with low redundancy to analyze an im- j=1 k1 =1 k2 =1

Vol.11 No.6, 2007 Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence 641

and Intelligent Informatics
Anaraki, M. S. et al.

Fig. 1. This construction leads to a large family of orthonor-

mal and directional bases for gray scale of images. Each of Fig. 2. The fixed block size of window is used to avoid over-
the blocks in the FRIT is processed separately. lapping, in order that the redundancy which is introduced by
type of partitioning is killed.

where ψ is the mother wavelet, (LL)W fj (k1 , k2 ) is a

coarse or smooth version of the original image f , and that it makes an anisotropic (bi-)orthogonal transforma-
(•)W j (k , k ); • = LH, HL, HH represents the details of f tion without redundancy:
f 1 2
(•)
at scale 2− j where 1 ≤ j ≤ J and location k1 , k2 . H is high Δ(x, y) = Δ((•)W fj (k1 , k2 )). . . . . . . . (3)
and L low pass filters applied to the input in both horizon-
The details with these blocks are:
tal and vertical directions, and three orientation selective
high pass subbands, HH, HL, LH, and a low pass sub- N/l∗2 j N/l∗2 j
band LL are generated. Thus the algorithm outputs J + 1
(•)
W fj (k1 , k2 ) = ∑ ∑ (•)
Δi1 ×i2 ((•)W fj (k1 , k2 )) (4)
subband arrays with size N × N. i1 =1 i2 =1
The à trous is used as an un-decimated wavelet trans- where l is the total number of blocks. Compared to the
form, despite the à trous transform is a redundant trans- curvelet transform, here, the detail parts are windowed
form and it is introduced as a problem [20]. It is per- separately while using the à trous as the basic function,
formed by removing all the up sampling and down sam- partitioning is:
pling blocks from the filter bank, and like orthogonal ⎛ ⎞
wavelet, it obtains sparse representation of singularities J N/2 j N/2 j
while it performs quite poorly on the elongated portions. Δi1 ×i2 ⎝ ∑ ∑ ∑ (•)W fj (k1 , k2 )ψkj1 ,k2 (x, y)⎠ . (5)
The idea of the DClet is first to decompose the input j=1 k1 =1 k2 =1
image into a set of wavelet bands and analyze each band
As final procedure of decomposition the function is ori-
by a non-redundancy Finite RIdgelet Transform (FRIT) il-
ented at an angle θ and each block is analyzed via the
lustrated in Fig. 1. This idea makes a directional wavelet
FRIT:
that outperforms conventional wavelet for orientation. It
is a scale sample of the wavelet transform following a ge- N/2 j N/2 j
ometric sequence of ratio 2.
(•)
R jf (k1 , k2 , θ ) = ∑ ∑ (•) Δ(x, y) ∗ ψkj1 ,k2 ,θ (x, y) (6)
The decomposition transform and reconstruction based x=1 y=1
on the proposed algorithm for an image with size N × N
((•) Δ)
is defined in the following procedure: j
RLH (k1 , k2 , θ ) = (•) Δ(x, y) ∗ ψkj1 ,k2 ,θ (x, y) (7)
Δ
First, an image is decomposed to different subbands via
the wavelet transform: that • = LH, HL, HH.
(LL)
The resulting transform not only has a high degree of
f (x, y) ⇒ W fj (k1 , k2 ) + (LH)W fj (k1 , k2 ) directionality and anisotropy, but also has the multiscale
+(HL)W fj (k1 , k2 ) + (HH)W fj (k1 , k2 ). . (2) and time frequency localization properties of wavelets.
The FRIT achieves both invertibility and non-
In this case instead of using the à trous as a symmetry redundancy. It is a digital ridgelet transform based on the
redundant transform, we use a (bi-)orthogonal wavelet Finite RAdon Transform (FRAT) that uses the orthogo-
transform as basic function. Each subband is windowed nal symmlet wavelet with four vanishing moments. The
into Δ windows of size i1 × i2 where i1 = i2 for square FRAT is summation of image pixels over a certain set of
windows or i1 = 2 ∗ i2 for rectangular ones, see Fig. 2. lines. Those lines are defined in a finite geometry in a
The coarse description of the image is not processed so similar way as the lines for the continuous radon trans-

642 Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence Vol.11 No.6, 2007

and Intelligent Informatics