We broaden the applicability of sparse coding, a machine learning method, to low-dose electron holography by using simulated holograms for learning and validation processes. The holograms, with shot noise, are prepared to generate a model, or a dictionary, that includes basic features representing interference fringes. The dictionary is applied to sparse representations of other simulated holograms with various signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Results demonstrate that this approach successfully removes noise for holograms with an extremely small SNR of 0.10, and that the denoised holograms provide the accurate phase distribution. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that the dictionary learned from the simulated holograms can be applied to denoising of experimental holograms of a p–n junction specimen recorded with different exposure times. The results indicate that the simulation-trained sparse coding is suitable for use over a wide range of imaging conditions, in particular for observing electron beam-sensitive materials.

Recently, many variational models involving high order derivatives have been widely used in image processing, because they can reduce staircase effects during noise elimination. However, it is very challenging to construct efficient algorithms to obtain the minimizers of original high order functionals. In this paper, we propose a new linearized augmented Lagrangian method for Euler's elastica image denoising model. We detail the procedures of finding the saddle-points of the augmented Lagrangian functional. Instead of solving associated linear systems by FFT or linear iterative methods (e.g., the Gauss-Seidel method), we adopt a linearized strategy to get an iteration sequence so as to reduce computational cost. In addition, we give some simple complexity analysis for the proposed method. Experimental results with comparison to the previous method are supplied to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method, and indicate that such a linearized augmented Lagrangian method is more suitable to deal with large-sized images.

We propose a new two-phase method for reconstruction of blurred images corrupted by impulse noise. In the first phase, we use a noise detector to identify the pixels that are contaminated by noise, and then, in the second phase, we reconstruct the noisy pixels by solving an equality constrained total variation minimization problem that preserves the exact values of the noise-free pixels. For images that are only corrupted by impulse noise (i.e., not blurred) we apply the semismooth Newton's method to a reduced problem, and if the images are also blurred, we solve the equality constrained reconstruction problem using a first-order primal-dual algorithm. The proposed model improves the computational efficiency (in the denoising case) and has the advantage of being regularization parameter-free. Our numerical results suggest that the method is competitive in terms of its restoration capabilities with respect to the other two-phase methods.

In this paper we consider an anisotropic convection-diffusion (ACD) filter for image denoising and compression simultaneously. The ACD filter is discretized by a tailored finite point method (TFPM), which can tailor some particular properties of the image in an irregular grid structure. A quadtree structure is implemented for the storage in multi-levels for the compression. We compare the performance of the proposed scheme with several well-known filters. The numerical results show that the proposed method is effective for removing a mixture of white Gaussian and salt-and-pepper noises.

In this paper, a fast algorithm for Euler’s elastica functional is proposed, in which the Euler’s elastica functional is reformulated as a constrained minimization problem. Combining the augmented Lagrangian method and operator splitting techniques, the resulting saddle-point problem is solved by a serial of subproblems. To tackle the nonlinear constraints arising in the model, a novel fixed-point-based approach is proposed so that all the subproblems either is a linear problem or has a closed-form solution. We show the good performance of our approach in terms of speed and reliability using numerous numerical examples on synthetic, real-world and medical images for image denoising, image inpainting and image zooming problems.

We propose an efficient gradient-type algorithm to solve the fourth-order LLT denoising model for both gray-scale and vector-valued images. Based on the primal-dual formulation of the original nondifferentiable model, the new algorithm updates the primal and dual variables alternately using the gradient descent/ascent flows. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the superiority of our algorithm.

In this paper, we propose a new projection method for solving a general minimization problems with two L1-regularization terms for image denoising. It is related to the split Bregman method, but it avoids solving PDEs in the iteration. We employ the fast iterative shrinkage-thresholding algorithm (FISTA) to speed up the proposed method to a convergence rate O(k−2). We also show the convergence of the algorithms. Finally, we apply the methods to the anisotropic Lysaker, Lundervold and Tai (LLT) model and demonstrate their efficiency.