WAVELET TRANSFORM

Wavelets are mathematical functions defined over a finite interval and having an average value of zero that transform data into different frequency components, representing each component with a resolution matched to its scale. The basic idea of the wavelet transform is to represent any arbitrary function as a superposition of a set of such wavelets or basis functions. These basis functions or baby wavelets are obtained from a single prototype wavelet called the mother wavelet, by dilations or contractions (scaling) and translations (shifts). They have advantages over traditional Fourier methods in analyzing physical situations where the signal contains discontinuities and sharp spikes. Many new wavelet applications such as image compression, turbulence, human vision, radar, and earthquake prediction are developed in recent years. In wavelet transform the basis functions are wavelets. Wavelets tend to be irregular and symmetric. All wavelet functions, w(2kt - m), are derived from a single mother wavelet, w(t). This wavelet is a small wave or pulse like the one shown in Fig.

Mother wavelet w(t)

Normally it starts at time t = 0 and ends at t = T. The shifted wavelet w(t - m) starts at t = m and ends at t = m + T. The scaled wavelets w(2kt) start at t = 0 and end at t = T/2k. Their graphs are w(t) compressed by the factor of 2k as shown in Fig. For example, when k = 1, the wavelet is shown in Fig (a). If k = 2 and 3, they are shown in (b) and (c), respectively.

(a)w(2t)

(b)w(4t)

(c)w(8t)

Scaled wavelets

The wavelets are called orthogonal when their inner products are zero. The smaller the scaling factor is, the wider the wavelet is. Wide wavelets are comparable to lowfrequency sinusoids and narrow wavelets are comparable to high-frequency sinusoids.

DISCRETE WAVELET TRANSFORM

Calculating wavelet coefficients at every possible scale is a fair amount of work, and it generates an awful lot of data. If the scales and positions are chosen based on powers of two, the so-called dyadic scales and positions, then calculating wavelet coefficients are efficient and just as accurate. This is obtained from discrete wavelet transform (DWT).

ONE-STAGE FILTERING
For many signals, the low-frequency content is the most important part. It is the identity of the signal. The high-frequency content, on the other hand, imparts details to the signal. In wavelet analysis, the approximations and details are obtained after filtering. The approximations are the high-scale, low frequency components of the signal. The details are the low-scale, high frequency components. The filtering process is schematically represented as in Fig

Single stage filtering

The original signal, S, passes through two complementary filters and emerges as two signals. Unfortunately, it may result in doubling of samples and hence to avoid this, downsampling is introduced. The process on the right, which includes downsampling, produces DWT coefficients. The schematic diagram with real signals inserted is as shown in Fig

Decomposition and decimation

MULTIPLE-LEVEL DECOMPOSITION

The decomposition process can be iterated, with successive approximations being decomposed in turn, so that one signal is broken down into many lower resolution components. This is called the wavelet decomposition tree and is depicted as in Fig

Multilevel decomposition

WAVELET RECONSTRUCTION
The reconstruction of the image is achieved by the inverse discrete wavelet transform (IDWT). The values are first upsampled and then passed to the filters. This is represented as shown in Fig

Wavelet Reconstruction

The wavelet analysis involves filtering and downsampling, whereas the wavelet reconstruction process consists of upsampling and filtering. Upsampling is the process of lengthening a signal component by inserting zeros between samples as shown in Fig.

Reconstruction using upsampling

RECONSTRUCTING APPROXIMATIONS AND DETAILS

It is possible to reconstruct the original signal from the coefficients of the approximations and details. The process yields a reconstructed

approximation which has the same length as the original signal and which is a real approximation of it.

The reconstructed details and approximations are true constituents of the original signal. Since details and approximations are produced by downsampling and are only half the length of the original signal they cannot be directly combined to reproduce the signal. It is necessary to reconstruct the approximations and details before combining them. The reconstructed signal is schematically represented as in Fig..

Reconstructed signal components

1-D WAVELET TRANSFORM The generic form for a one-dimensional (1-D) wavelet transform is shown in Fig.. Here a signal is passed through a low pass and high pass filter, h and g, respectively, then down sampled by a factor of two, constituting one level of transform.

1D Wavelet Decomposition.

Repeating the filtering and decimation process on the lowpass branch outputs make multiple levels or scales of the wavelet transform only. The process is typically carried out for a finite number of levels K, and the resulting coefficients are called wavelet coefficients.

The one-dimensional forward wavelet transform is defined by a pair of filters s and t that are convolved with the data at either the even or odd locations. The filters s and t used for the forward transform are called analysis filters.

nL li = sjx2i+j j=-nl and

nH hi = tjx2i+1+j j=-nH

Although l and h are two separate output streams, together they have the same total number of coefficients as the original data. The output stream l, which is commonly referred to as the low-pass data may then have the identical process applied again repeatedly. The other output stream, h (or high-pass data), generally remains untouched. The inverse process expands the two separate lowand high-pass data streams by inserting zeros between every other sample, convolves the resulting data streams with two new synthesis filters s and t, and adds them together to regenerate the original double size data stream. nH yi = nl l 2i+1 = 0 h2i+1 = hi, h2i = 0 tjli+j + sj hi+j where l2i = li, j= -nH j= -nH

To meet the definition of a wavelet transform, the analysis and synthesis filters s, t, s and t must be chosen so that the inverse transform perfectly

reconstructs the original data. Since the wavelet transform maintains the same number of coefficients as the original data, the transform itself does not provide any compression. However, the structure provided by the transform and the expected values of the coefficients give a form that is much more amenable to compression than the original data. Since the filters s, t, s and t are chosen to be perfectly invertible, the wavelet transform itself is lossless. Later application of the quantization step will cause some data loss and can be used to control the degree of compression. The forward wavelet-based transform uses a 1-D subband decomposition process; here a 1-D set of samples is converted into the low-pass subband (Li) and high-pass subband (Hi). The low-pass subband represents a down sampled low-resolution version of the original image. The high-pass subband represents residual information of the original image, needed for the perfect reconstruction of the original image from the low-pass subband 2-D TRANSFORM HEIRARCHY The 1-D wavelet transform can be extended to a two-dimensional (2D) wavelet transform using separable wavelet filters. With separable filters the 2-D transform can be computed by applying a 1-D transform to all the rows of the input, and then repeating on all of the columns.

LL1

HL1

LH1

HH1

Subband Labeling Scheme for a one level, 2-D Wavelet Transform

The original image of a one-level (K=1), 2-D wavelet transform, with corresponding notation is shown in Fig. The example is repeated for a threelevel (K =3) wavelet expansion in Fig. In all of the discussion K represents the highest level of the decomposition of the wavelet transform.

LL1 LH1 LH2

HL1 HH1

HL2 HL3 HH2

LH3

HH3

Subband labeling Scheme for a Three Level, 2-D Wavelet Transform

The 2-D subband decomposition is just an extension of 1-D subband decomposition. The entire process is carried out by executing 1-D subband decomposition twice, first in one direction (horizontal), then in the orthogonal

(vertical) direction. For example, the low-pass subbands (Li) resulting from the horizontal direction is further decomposed in the vertical direction, leading to LLi and LHi subbands.

Similarly, the high pass subband (Hi) is further decomposed into HLi and HHi. After one level of transform, the image can be further decomposed by applying the 2-D subband decomposition to the existing LLi subband. This iterative process results in multiple transform levels. In Fig. the first level of transform results in LH1, HL1, and HH1, in addition to LL1, which is further decomposed into LH2, HL2, HH2, LL2 at the second level, and the information of LL2 is used for the third level transform. The subband LLi is a low-resolution subband and high-pass subbands LHi, HLi, HHi are horizontal, vertical, and diagonal subband respectively since they represent the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal residual information of the original image. An example of three-level decomposition into subbands of the image CASTLE is illustrated in Fig. H2H1HH

The process of 2-D wavelet transform applied through three transform levels

To obtain a two-dimensional wavelet transform, the one-dimensional transform is applied first along the rows and then along the columns to produce four subbands: lowresolution, horizontal, vertical, and diagonal. (The vertical subband is created by applying a horizontal high-pass, which yields vertical edges.) At each level, the wavelet transform can be

reapplied to the low-resolution subband to further decorrelate the image. Fig. illustrates the image decomposition, defining level and subband conventions used in the AWIC algorithm. The final configuration contains a small low-resolution subband. In addition to the various transform levels, the phrase level 0 is used to refer to the original image data. When the user requests zero levels of transform, the original image data (level 0) is treated as a low-pass band and processing follows its natural flow.

Low Resolution Subband

4 3 4 3 Level 2 Level 1 Horizontal Subband LH 4 3 Level 2 Level 1 Diagonal Subband HH Level 2 Level 1 Vertical subband HL

Image Decomposition Using Wavelets

Wavelet transform is first performed on each source images, then a fusion decision map is generated based on a set of fusion rules. The fused wavelet coefficient map can be constructed from the wavelet coefficients of the source images according to the fusion decision map. Finally the fused image is obtained by performing the inverse wavelet transform. From the above diagram, we can see that the fusion rules are playing a very important role during the fusion process. Here are some frequently used fusion rules in the previous work