Modified BM3D algorithm for image denoising using the directed diffusion equation

In order to preserve the edges and details of the image better, a modified block-matching and 3D filtering algorithm based on the directed diffusion is proposed. First, the block-matching and 3D filtering result is divided into three perpendicular subbands by using the wavelet decomposition. Second, by adding the diffusion operator and diffusion coefficients to the directed diffusion equation, the diffusion speed can be accelerated and edges can not be blurred quickly. Then we diffuse the subband of the high-frequency, of which the wavelet coefficients are less than the threshold to the corresponding subband of the noisy image to get a new estimate. Lastly, by replacing the corresponding subband of the block-matching and 3D filtering estimated image with the new one, we obtain the improved denoising result. Experimental results show that the improved algorithm achieves better performance than the original block-matching and 3D filtering algorithm in terms of both removing noise and preserving the edges and details of the image.