Unit 3 Image Restoration

The main objective of restoration is to improve the quality of a digital image which
has been degraded due to Various phenomena like
● Motion
● Noise
● Improper focusing of camera during image acquisition.

The purpose of image restoration is to restore a degraded/distorted image to its

original content and quality.
● Restoration involves following process
● Modeling of Degradation
● Applying the inverse process to recover the original image

We will assume that a degradation function exists, which, together with additive
noise, operates on the input image f(x,y) to produce a degraded image g(x,y).

The objective of restoration is to obtain an estimate for the original image from its
degraded version g(x,y) while having some knowledge about the degradation
function H and the noise.

Various Noise Models: The Principal source of noise in digital images arise
during image Acquisition and transmission.

Acquiring images with Camera and Light levels are major factor affecting the
amount of noise in resulting image.

Images are corrupted during transmission due to interferences in the channel used
for transmission. for example, Images transmitted using a wireless network might
be corrupted due to atmospheric disturbances.
 Unit 3 Image Restoration

Some important noise probability density functions

Gaussian noise: The Gaussian noise arises in an image due to factors such as
electronic circuit noise and sensor noise due to poor illumination. The images
acquired by image scanners exhibit this phenomenon.
Rayleigh noise: Rayleigh noise PDF is helpful in characterizing noise phenomena
in range imaging.
(eg: X-ray, Ultraviolet imaging which depend upon the frequency of light)
Erlang gamma noise: Erlang noise is specified as Here a > 0 and b is a positive
integer. Gamma noise finds in laser imaging.
Exponential noise: Exponential noise is specified as Here a > 0. The mean and
variance are given by Exponential pdf is a special case of Erlang pdf with
b=1.Used in laser imaging.
Impulse: Impulse (salt-and-pepper) noise (bipolar) is specified as If b>a, intensity
b will appear as a light dot on the image and a appears as a dark dot If either Pa or
Pb is zero the noise is called unipolar.If neither probability is zero, and especially
if they are approximatly equal, impulse noise value will resemble salt and peeper
granules randomely distributed over the image.for this reason , bipolar impulse
noise is called salt and peeper noise.
 Unit 3 Image Restoration

Image Restoration Using Spatial Domain Filtering

Mean filters
› Arithmetic mean filter
› Geometric mean filter
› Harmonic mean filter
› Contra-harmonic mean filter
Order statistics filters
› Median filter
› Max and min filters
› Mid-point filter
› alpha-trimmed filters
Adaptive filters
› Adaptive local noise reduction filter
› Adaptive median filter

Arithmetic mean filter: The arithmetic mean filter computed the average value of
the corrupted image g(x,y) in the area defined by Sxy. Let Sxy represent the set of
coordinates in a rectangular neighborhood of size m x n, centered at the point (x,y).
 Unit 3 Image Restoration

Effect: The Mean filter simply smoothes the variations in an image.noise is

reduced as a result of blurring.

Geometric mean filter:

Effect: Geometric mean filter achieves smoothing comparable to the arithmetic
mean filter but it preserves more details (It means loss less image detail in the
process).

Harmonic mean filter:

Effect: Harmonic mean filter works well for salt noise and other types of noise
(such as Gaussian) but fails for pepper noise.

Contra-harmonic mean filter: Here Q is the order of the filter. This filter is well
suited for reducing the effects of salt-pepper noise. For positive values of Q,
eliminates pepper noise; for negative values of Q, it eliminates salt noise. This
filter cannot reduce both simultaneously.
Notice that contraharmonic filter reduces to the arithmetic mean filter when Q = 0
and to the harmonic mean filter if Q = -1.

Order statistics filters

Median filter: 24. Median filter:It replaces the pixel value by the median of the
intensity levels in the neighborhood of that pixel.
Effect: Median filters provide excellent results for certain types of noise with
considerably less blurring than linear smoothing filters of the same size. These
filters are very effective against both bipolar and unipolar noise. The same filter
can be applied more than once to yield better results.

Max and min filters: This filter is useful for finding the brightest points in an
image; therefore, its effective against pepper noise.
 Unit 3 Image Restoration

Min filters: This filter is useful for finding the darkest points in an image;
therefore, its effective against salt noise.( it reduces the salt noise because it will
eliminate the higher gray values in the subimage.

Mid-point filter: It computes the midpoint between the maximum and minimum
values of intensities. This filter is a combination of order statistics and averaging
and works best for Gaussian and uniform noise contaminations.

Alpha-trimmed filters: If we delete d/2 highest intensity values and d/2 lowest
intensity values of g(s,t) in the neighbourhood sxy., denote the rest as gr(s.t), a
filter that averages what is left is alpha- trimmed mean filter:
d can range from 0 to mn-1.
When d = 0, this filter reduces to the arithmetic mean filter, when d = mn-1,
this filter reduces to a median filter.
For other values of d, the filter is useful in situation with noise of multiple
types, such as a combination of salt-and-pepper and Gaussian noise.

Adaptive filters: Adaptive filters are those filters whose behavior changes based
on the statistical characteristics of the image inside the filter region defined by a
rectangular window size Sxy.
It is better than the mean filter and order statistics filter.

Adaptive local noise reduction filter: It uses two statistical parameters, mean and
variance for the elimination of noise.
Mean Parameter: It gives the average gray value.
Variance: It provides the estimate of the contrast in the image.
the adaptive filter is:
The response of filter is based on four quantities:-
➔ G(x,y) the value of noisy image at (x,y).
➔ Variance of noise corrupting f(x,y) to form g(x,y).
➔ mL local mean of pixels in the Sxy.
➔ The local variance of the pixels in Sxy
 Unit 3 Image Restoration

Adaptive median filter: It can handle impulse noise with larger probabilities than
traditional median filter. It operates on a rectangular region Sxy, whose size is
changing. Window size is variable to improve efficiency.
Adaptive median filter has 3 goals:
➔ To remove impulse noise
➔ To provide smoothing
➔ To reduce distortion
 Unit 3 Image Restoration

The adaptive median filter successfully removes impulsive noise from images. It
does a reasonably good job of smoothening images that contain non-impulsive
noise.

When both types of noise are present, the algorithm is not as successful in
removing impulsive noise and its performance deteriorates.
 Unit 3 Image Restoration

Image Restoration Using Frequency Domain Filtering

Frequency Domain Filters are used for smoothing and sharpening of image by
removal of high or low frequency components. Sometimes it is possible of
removal of very high and very low frequency. Frequency domain filters are
different from spatial domain filters as it basically focuses on the frequency of
the images. It is basically done for two basic operation i.e., Smoothing and
Sharpening.
These are of 3 types:

1. Low pass filter:

Low pass filter removes the high frequency components that means it
keeps low frequency components. It is used for smoothing the image. It is
used to smoothen the image by attenuating high frequency components
and preserving low frequency components.

Mechanism of low pass filtering in frequency domain is given by:

G(u, v) = H(u, v) . F(u, v)
where F(u, v) is the Fourier Transform of original image
and H(u, v) is the Fourier Transform of filtering mask
 Unit 3 Image Restoration

2. High pass filter:

High pass filter removes the low frequency components that means it
keeps high frequency components. It is used for sharpening the image. It is
used to sharpen the image by attenuating low frequency components and
preserving high frequency components.

Mechanism of high pass filtering in frequency domain is given by:

H(u, v) = 1 - H'(u, v)
where H(u, v) is the Fourier Transform of high pass filtering
and H'(u, v) is the Fourier Transform of low pass filtering

3. Band pass filter:

Band pass filter removes the very low frequency and very high
frequency components that means it keeps the moderate range
band of frequencies. Band pass filtering is used to enhance edges
while reducing the noise at the same time.