SEGMENTATION OF NOISY COLOUR IMAGES USING CAUCHY DISTRIBUTION IN THE COMPLEX WAVELET DOMAIN

by: V.KRISHAN BHARADWAJ (095U1A0458)

INTRODUCTION:
Image segmentation is a fundamental problem in image

processing and image analysis.

To overcome the shortcomings, noise reduction and

segmentation are performed separately.

Image de noising and segmentation can also be

incorporated into a unified framework where a prior knowledge gained from the denoising process is used to aid the image segmentation.

FRAME WORK OF THE ALGORITHM:

COLOUR IMAGE DENOISING WITH CAUCHY DISTRIBUTION:

To design a statistical estimator that recovers the signal

component of the wavelet coefficients in noisy color images by using a bivariate Cauchy signal prior to distribution.

Noise component can be modeled as a zero-mean

Gaussian random variable.

CAUCHY DISTRIBUTION:
The univariate Cauchy distribution has the PDF defined

as

The Cauchy model provides a better fit on these heavy

tails than the generalized Gaussian model.

STATISTICAL PROCESSOR FOR NOISE REDUCTION:

The 2-D wavelet transform is a powerful tool, providing a

natural arrangement of image wavelet coefficients into Multi scale and oriented sub bands and allowing the study of each sub band separately.

The parameters are estimated using maximum likelihood

method from noisy observations.

MAP ESTIMATION OF CAUCHY SIGNALS IN ADDITIVE WHITE GAUSSIAN NOISE:

We assume the original image is contaminated with

signal-independent additive white Gaussian noise.

SIGNAL PARAMETERS ESTIMATION IN NOISY OBSERVATIONS:

First, we find the level of noise.

For the purpose of bivariate Cauchy model parameter

estimation from observed data, a method based on empirical characteristic function has been proposed.

IMAGE SEGMENTATION ALGORITHM:

The model parameters obtained from the de noising

stage can be used in the segmentation stage.

This section describes a multi scale image segmentation

algorithm as shown in the dotted box of the frame work of the algorithm.

INITIAL TEXTURE SEGMENTATION:

An image discontinuity from one band is likely to occur in

at least some of the remaining bands.

Texture segmentation is applied to all image bands

separately to obtain a texture map per image band.

The parameter corresponding to the noise-free

coefficients is used in this stage to estimate the texture features within the original image. Therefore the feature value Tc(x, y) in the c color band at the pixel location (x, y) is defined as

INITIAL TEXTURE SEGMENTATION (contd..):

If pixel Q belongs to a textured region in all the three

color bands, Q is assigned to a textured region. If pixel Q belongs to a textured region in any two among the three color bands, Q is assigned to a textured region. Otherwise, pixel Q is classified to a non-textured region.

INITIAL TEXTURE SEGMENTATION (contd..):

a Texture map using multiple bands b Texture map using monochrome band c Texture map without de noising d Texture map on the clean image using Cauchy model

Multi scale image segmentation:

The textured and non-textured regions are further

segmented.
The dominant colors are first extracted based on peer

group filtering and the generalized Lloyd algorithm.

A pixel is assigned to the neighbor class that has the

minimum D value using the following function.

Statistical region merging:

The main difference lies in the way the features are

extracted within the regions.

Euclidean distance of the color histograms extracted from

the neighboring non-textured segments is calculated.

Experimental results:
Validating the de noising performance.

To test the proposed segmentation algorithm on different

images containing artificial and natural noise.

The default values of the thresholds were set to 0.4 for

non-textured regions and to 0.6 for textured regions, respectively.

SEGMENTATION RESULTS FOR NATURAL IMAGES:

APPLICATION TO MULTISPECTRAL IMAGES:

Noise-removal processor based on the bivariate Cauchy

distribution makes it possible to preserve fine image signal details.

The initial texture segmentation is able to generate a precise

image texture map via improved texture feature extraction.

Statistical region merging stage enhances the final

segmentation results.
All these three components are combined effectively to build a

robust and efficient image segmentation framework.

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK:

The main contribution of this work is that it provides an

accurate and repliable image segmentation algorithmes for Noisy coloured image which integrates statistical methods, de noising techniques and multi resolution analysis into a single framework.
Extension of the proposed method to the case of

multidimensional data, such as video sequences contaminated with heavy-tailed noise.

Thank you