Real time ultrasound image denoising

Image denoising is the process of removing the noise that perturbs image analysis methods. In some applications like segmentation or registration, denoising is intended to smooth homogeneous areas while preserving the contours. In many applications like video analysis, visual servoing or image-guided surgical interventions, real-time denoising is required. This paper presents a method for real-time denoising of ultrasound images: a modified version of the NL-means method is presented that incorporates an ultrasound dedicated noise model, as well as a GPU implementation of the algorithm. Results demonstrate that the proposed method is very efficient in terms of denoising quality and is real-time.     

Fast GPU-based denoising filter using isoline levels

In this study, we describe a GPU-based filter for image denoising, whose principle rests on Matheron’s level sets theory first introduced in 1975 but rarely implemented because of its high computation cost. We use the fact that, within a natural image, significant contours of objects coincide with parts of the image level-lines. The presented algorithm assumes an a priori knowledge of the corrupting noise type and uses the polygonal level-line modeling constraint to estimate the gray-level of each pixel of the denoised image by local maximum likelihood optimization. Over the 512 × 512 pixel test images, the freely available implementation of the state-of-the-art BM3D algorithm achieves 9.56 dB and 36 % of mean improvement in 4.3 s, respectively, for peak signal to noise ratio and mean structural similarity index. Over the same images, our implementation features a high quality/runtime ratio, with a mean improvement of 7.14 dB and 30 % in 9 ms, which is 470 times as fast and potentially allows processing high-definition video images at 19 fps.     

基于量子理论的图像中值滤波

在传统图像中值滤波算法中,固定排序窗和无条件中值运算会影响算法的降噪能力。为此,提出一种改进的图像中值滤波算法。借鉴量子理论提出数字图像的伪量子化表示形式,应用量子哈达玛变换引入自适应机制,使排序窗口的大小和形状能根据其移动位置的图像局部特征自适应地变化,并引入有条件中值运算保留图像细节。仿真结果表明,与传统中值滤波和递归中值滤波算法相比,该算法在保留图像细节的同时,具有更强的降噪能力,且噪声强度对滤波效果的影响较小。     

基于噪声检测的自适应中值滤波算法

针对现有中值滤波算法对于高密度噪声图像以及纹理细腻图像的边缘处理能力欠佳的缺陷,提出一种基于动态窗口的自适应中值滤波算法。该算法根据噪声点与周围信息的关联程度调整噪声点滤波值,从而更好地处理图像的细节部分。该算法中的自适应策略加强了滤波算法的去噪性能,使其对于含有任意噪声密度的图像也能很好地进行噪声滤除。通过仿真分析,新算法对于细节丰富的图像以及高密度噪声的图像滤波效果良好,有效地提高了图像的峰值信噪比,去噪效果相比其他方法更加优秀。     

An FPGA Design for Real-Time Image Denoising

The increasing use of images in miscellaneous applications such as medical image analysis and visual quality inspection has led to growing interest in image processing. However, images are often contaminated with noise which may corrupt any of the following image processing steps. Therefore, noise filtering is often a necessary preprocessing step for the most image processing applications. Thus, in this paper an optimized field-programmable gate array (FPGA) design is proposed to implement the adaptive vector directional distance filter (AVDDF) in hardware/software (HW/SW) codesign context for removing noise from the images in real-time. For that, the high-level synthesis (HLS) flow is used through the Xilinx Vivado HLS tool to reduce the design complexity of the HW part. The SW part is developed based on C/C++ programming language and executed on an advanced reduced instruction set computer (RISC) machines (ARM) Cortex-A53 processor. The communication between the SW and HW parts is achieved using the advanced extensible Interface stream (AXI-stream) interface to increase the data bandwidth. The experiment results on the Xilinx ZCU102 FPGA board show an improvement in processing time of the AVDDF filter by 98% for the HW/SW implementation relative to the SW implementation. This result is given for the same quality of image between the HW/SW and SW implementations in terms of the normalized color difference (NCD) and the peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR).     

采用自适应四点窗中点滤波的高椒盐噪声滤除方法

针对当前中值滤波器处理图像高椒盐噪声效果不佳和实时性不强等问题,提出了一种快速自适应四点窗中点滤波（AFMF）方法。首先,为了降低计算复杂度,使用简单的极值方法检测噪声点;然后,摒弃传统的全点窗口,不用中值滤波,而是在开关滤波和裁剪滤波的基础上,采用新型的非线性滤波方法：中点滤波,简化了算法的流程,提升了算法的计算效率,提高了去噪效果;最后,从3×3窗口开始到由里向外推进,逐渐增大窗口,形成自适应滤波,一直到噪声点处理完,如此避免了窗口大小参数的设置。实验结果表明,与AMF、SAMF、MDBUTMF以及DBCWMF相比,AFMF在处理高密度椒盐噪声上不仅有更好的去噪性能、更快的运行速度（约0.18 s）,且无需设置参数,可操作性强,具有较强的实用性。     

改进的曲率滤波强噪声图像去噪方法

目的 医学影像获取和视频监控过程中会出现一些恶劣环境,导致图像有许多强噪声斑点,质量较差。在处理强噪声图像时,传统的基于变分模型的算法,因需要计算高阶偏微分方程,计算复杂且收敛较慢;而隐式使用图像曲率信息的曲率滤波模型,在处理强噪声图像时,又存在去噪不完全的缺陷。为了克服这些缺陷,在保持图像边缘和细节特征的同时去除图像的强噪声,实现快速去噪,提出了一种改进的曲率滤波算法。方法 本文算法在隐式计算曲率时,通过半窗三角切平面和最小三角切平面的组合,用投影算子代替传统曲率滤波的最小三角切平面投影算子,并根据强噪声图像存在强噪声斑点的特征,修正正则能量函数,增添局部方差的正则能量,使得正则项的约束更加合理,提高了算法的去噪性能,从而达到增强去噪能力和保护图像边缘与细节的目的。结果 针对多种不同强度的混合噪声图像对本文算法性能进行测试,并与传统的基于变分法的去噪算法（ROF）和曲率滤波去噪等算法进行去噪效果对比,同时使用峰值信噪比（PSNR）和结构相似性（SSIM）作为滤波算法性能的客观评价指标。本文算法在对强噪声图像去噪处理时,能够有效地保持图像的边缘和细节特征,具备较好的PSNR和SSIM,在PSNR上比ROF模型和曲率滤波算法分别平均提高1.67 dB和2.93 dB,SSIM分别平均提高0.29和0.26。由于采用了隐式计算图像曲率,算法的处理速度与曲率滤波算法相近。结论 根据强噪声图像噪声特征对曲率滤波算法进行优化,改进投影算子和能量函数正则项,使得曲率滤波算法能够更好地适用于强噪声图像,实验结果表明,该方法与传统的变分法相比,对强噪声图像去噪效果显著。     

基于时域自适应滤波及非局部平均的夜视图像去噪算法

为了增强夜视图像的可视性和清晰度,提出了一种适用于夜视环境的视频图像去噪和增强算法。首先在噪声消除方面,提出了一种基于卡尔曼结构更新的运动自适应时域滤波器。然后利用带有自适应限幅阈值的伽马校正调整RGB直方图,来增加去噪视频图像的动态范围。最后,使用非局部平均(NLM)去噪滤波器消除剩余噪声。提出的方法能够直接用于颜色滤波阵列(CFA)原始视频图像,以便获得较低的内存消耗。在夜间环境(低于0.1 lux)下,利用2百万像素CMOS传感器进行了具体测试,实验结果表明,相比现有的夜视图像增强方法,提出的视频图像增强法在夜间环境下均表现出了更加良好的性能指标。     

Adaptive noise-reducing anisotropic diffusion filter

In image processing and computer vision, the denoising process is an important step before several processing tasks. This paper presents a new adaptive noise-reducing anisotropic diffusion (ANRAD) method to improve the image quality, which can be considered as a modified version of a speckle-reducing anisotropic diffusion (SRAD) filter. The SRAD works very well for monochrome images with speckle noise. However, in the case of images corrupted with other types of noise, it cannot provide optimal image quality due to the inaccurate noise model. The ANRAD method introduces an automatic RGB noise model estimator in a partial differential equation system similar to the SRAD diffusion, which estimates at each iteration an upper bound of the real noise level function by fitting a lower envelope to the standard deviations of pre-segment image variances. Compared to the conventional SRAD filter, the proposed filter has the advantage of being adapted to the color noise produced by today’s CCD digital camera. The simulation results show that the ANRAD filter can reduce the noise while preserving image edges and fine details very well. Also, it is favorably compared to the fast non-local means filter, showing an improvement in the quality of the restored image. A quantitative comparison measure is given by the parameters like the mean structural similarity index and the peak signal-to-noise ratio.     

基于修正维纳滤波的小波包变换图像去噪

图像去噪是图像处理中一个非常重要的环节。为了改善降质图像质量,根据Donoho提出的小波阈值去噪算法,分析了维纳滤波原理,提出了一种基于修正维纳滤波的小波包变换图像去噪方法。利用修正维纳滤波对噪声图像进行处理,用处理后的图像计算噪声的标准方差,以此作为小波包的阈值。利用小波包对维纳滤波后的图像进行分解,实现对图像的低频和高频部分分别进行分解,用计算出的阈值对小波包树系数进行软阈值处理。利用小波包逆变换来获取去噪后的图像。结果表明：在噪声方差为0.01时,经该算法去噪后图像的PSNR比小波包自适应阈值去噪后的PSNR高出8.8 dB。该算法不仅能有效地去除加性高斯白噪声,而且能很好地保留边缘信息,极大地改善了图像的视觉质量。     

一种基于自适应的新型中值滤波算法

提出了一种新的自适应中值滤波算法,首先使用3×3窗口在图像上滑动,计算该窗口中心像素的块均匀度,并与整幅图像的块均匀度比较,自适应地确定窗口中心像素是否为噪声点;然后统计3×3窗口中噪声点的个数,自适应地调整滤波窗口大小,最后自适应地计算权值,并采用改进的加权中值滤波方法对噪声点进行逐点滤波。该方法既能有效地去除图像噪声点,又能较好地保持图像细节部分。通过对实验结果进一步分析,该方法比均值滤波和中值滤波的性能更加优化,在椒盐噪声大小相同的情况下,PSNR值提高了9.4~12.7。评价结果与目视效果吻合良好,为图像去除噪声提供了一个新的途径。     

Non-linear diffusion of image noise with minimal iterativity

Non-linear diffusion (ND) is an iterative difference equation used in several image processing applications such as denoising, segmentation, or compression. The number of iterations required to achieve optimal processing can be very high, making ND not suitable for real-time requirements. In this paper, we study how to reduce complexity of ND so as to achieve minimal number of iterations for real-time image denoising. To do this, we first study the relations between parameters of the iterative equation: the number of iterations, the time step, and the edge strength. We then proceed by estimating the minimally required number of iterations to achieve effective denoising. Then, we relate the edge strength to the number of iterations, to noise, and to the image structure. The resulted minimal iterativity ND is very fast, while still achieves similar or better noise reduction compared to related ND work. This paper also shows how the proposed spatial filter is suitable for structure-sensitive object segmentation and temporal noise reduction.     

Parallel implementation of Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrices and Haralick texture features on cell architecture

Texture features extraction algorithms are key functions in various image processing applications such as medical images, remote sensing, and content-based image retrieval. The most common way to extract texture features is the use of Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrices (GLCMs). The GLCM contains the second-order statistical information of spatial relationship of the pixels of an image. Haralick texture features are extracted using these GLCMs. However, the GLCMs and Haralick texture features extraction algorithms are computationally intensive. In this paper, we apply different parallel techniques such as task- and data-level parallelism to exploit available parallelism of those applications on the Cell multi-core processor. Experimental results have shown that our parallel implementations using 16 Synergistic Processor Elements significantly reduce the computational times of the GLCMs and texture features extraction algorithms by a factor of 10× over non-parallel optimized implementations for different image sizes from 128×128 to 1024×1024.     

基于新阈值函数和小波分析的数字图像去噪方法

在数字图像处理过程中消除和减弱噪声对信号具有很重要的影响。中值滤波是传统的减少图像噪声,提高图像质量的可行方法。文章研究了中值滤波及其改进算法在图像去噪中的应用,基于小波分析基础理论和数字图像信号的小波变换分解重构原理,通过对小波分解系数选定恰当的阈值并进行阈值量化,基于小波分解后的高低频系数进行信号重构,从而有效去除或降低信号的噪声。本文采取的算法在MATLAB仿真平台进行了验证,结果表明,基于本文提出的阈值函数和小波分析处理方法对图像去噪具有更好的适应性,能够更好的改善数字图像的质量。     

A Low‐Memory,Straightforward and Fast Bilateral Filter Through Subsampling in Spatial Domain

In this work we present a new algorithm for accelerating the colour bilateral filter based on a subsampling strategy working in the spatial domain. The base idea is to use a suitable subset of samples of the entire kernel in order to obtain a good estimation of the exact filter values. The main advantages of the proposed approach are that it has an excellent trade‐off between visual quality and speed‐up, a very low memory overhead is required and it is straightforward to implement on the GPU allowing real‐time filtering. We show different applications of the proposed filter, in particular efficient cross‐bilateral filtering, real‐time edge‐aware image editing and fast video denoising. We compare our method against the state of the art in terms of image quality, time performance and memory usage.     

改进椒盐去噪方法在井下图像中的应用

为了提高井下图像采集的质量,针对目前改进中值滤波算法的优缺点,提出了一种新的去除井下图像椒盐噪声的算法。该算法首先判断出图像中的噪声点和非噪声点,然后根据窗口内噪声点的密度大小自适应地确定滤波窗口的大小,并按照一定的规律赋予窗口内像素点不同的权重,最后采用加权中值方法处理图像中的噪声点。计算机模拟实验证明该方法不仅能有效地去除不同密度的椒盐噪声,而且能很好地保持图像的细节,滤波效果比已提出的中值滤波算法更好。     

强椒盐噪声图像的二次自适应中值滤波算法

中值滤波是一种简单而重要的处理椒盐噪声图像的方法,但传统的中值滤波只适用于弱噪声的情况,对于强椒盐噪声并不适用.本文在中值滤波的基础上,提出了一种自适应的二次中值滤波算法,该算法具有实现过程简单,运算复杂度低,自适应性强的特点.经过实验表明:该方法对强椒盐噪声图像具有良好的处理效果,特别适用于噪声大于50%的高强度椒盐噪声图像.     

改进的中值滤波去噪算法应用分析

去噪处理是图像处理中较为重要的环节。中值滤波是抑制图像的噪声的一个行之有效的办法,选择适当大小的中值滤波窗口可以在最大限度地保持图像精度的基础上去除图像噪声。在对中值滤波去噪算法的适用性特点进行研究的基础上,进一步做了中值滤波去噪的改进算法的应用实现研究,同时对其他去噪算法,如均值滤波、低通滤波的小波变换进行实验分析研究,并对实验结果做了相应的比较。     

视觉显著性驱动的全景渲染图非局部降噪

目的 传统降噪方法通常忽视人眼感知因素,对不同区域的图像块都进行同等处理。当使用传统降噪算法对全景画面滤波处理时,全景画面两极区域容易产生模糊问题,尤其是通过视口观察时,该问题更加明显。针对此问题,提出一种视觉显著性驱动的蒙特卡洛渲染生成全景图非局部均值（visual saliency driven non-local means,VSD-NLM）滤波降噪算法。方法 在VSD-NLM算法中首先使用全景图显著区域检测算法获取全景画面的显著区域;然后使用梯度幅值相似性偏差辅助的非局部均值（gradient magnitude similarity deviation assisted non-local means,GMSDA-NLM）滤波算法,降低显著区域的噪声;同时设计并行非局部均值（parallel non-local means,P-NLM）滤波算法,加快降噪处理速度,降低非显著区域噪声;最后利用改进的Canny算法提取梯度特征,同时结合各向异性扩散引导滤波来优化降噪结果。结果 采用结构相似度（structural similarity,SSIM）和FLIP作为评价指标,来对比VSDNLM算法与非局部均值滤波算法、多特征非局部均值滤波算法以及渐进式去噪算法等其他算法的性能。实验结果表明,VSD-NLM算法的降噪结果在客观评价指标上均优于对比算法,SSIM值比其他算法平均提高14.7%,FLIP值比其他算法平均降低15.2%。在视觉效果方面,VSD-NLM算法能够减轻全景画面模糊,提升视觉感知质量。本文对GMSDA-NLM和P-NLM算法的有效性进行了实验验证,相较于非局部均值滤波算法,GMSDA-NLM算法能够有效去除噪声并保持图像细节的完整性。P-NLM算法在运行速度方面相较对比算法平均提高约6倍,与串行算法生成的图像之间的SSIM值可达到0.996。结论 本文算法能够更好地用于全景图降噪,滤波效果更佳,对全景电影制作应用有重要的理论和实际意义。     

图像噪声滤波的研究方法及进展

图像噪声滤波作为图像处理的前端,直接影响后续图像处理的各个环节。介绍的图像噪声滤波的方法主要有空间域去噪、变换域去噪及几种新兴的图像噪声滤波方法,在分析了各种算法优点和缺点的基础上,对图像降噪的最新研究方向进行了展望。