Digital Image Restoration

Book excerpt: The field of image restoration is concerned with the estimation of uncorrupted im ages from noisy, blurred ones. These blurs might be caused by optical distortions, object motion during imaging, or atmospheric turbulence. In many scientific and en gineering applications, such as aerial imaging, remote sensing, electron microscopy, and medical imaging, there is active or potential work in image restoration. The purpose of this book is to provide in-depth treatment of some recent ad vances in the field of image restoration. A survey of the field is provided in the introduction. Recent research results are presented, regarding the formulation of the restoration problem as a convex programming problem, the implementation of restoration algorithms using artificial neural networks, the derivation of non stationary image models (compound random fields) and their application to image estimation and restoration, the development of algorithms for the simultaneous image and blur parameter identification and restoration, and the development of algorithms for restoring scanned photographic images. Special attention is directed to issues of numerical implementation. A large number of pictures demonstrate the performance of the restoration approaches. This book provides a clear understanding of the past achievements, a detailed description of the very important recent developments and the limitations of existing approaches, in the rapidly growing field of image restoration. It will be useful both as a reference book for working scientists and engineers and as a supplementary textbook in courses on image processing.