Germana Landi

Non-negativity and iterative methods for ill-posed problems

The Generalized Minimal RESidual (GMRES) method and conjugate gradient method applied to the normal equations (CGNR) are popular iterative schemes for the solution of large linear systems of equations. GMRES requires the matrix of the linear system to be square and nonsingular, while CGNR also can be applied to overdetermined or underdetermined linear systems of equations. When equipped with a suitable stopping rule, both GMRES and CGNR are regularization methods for the solution of linear ill-posed problems. Many linear ill-posed problems that arise in the sciences and engineering have non-negative solutions. This paper describes iterative schemes, based on the GMRES or CGNR methods, for the computation of non-negative solutions of linear ill-posed problems. The computations with these schemes are terminated as soon as a non-negative approximate solution which satisfies the discrepancy principle has been found. Several computed examples illustrate that the schemes of this paper are able to compute non-negative approximate solutions of higher quality with less computational effort than several available numerical methods.

An efficient method for nonnegatively constrained Total Variation-based denoising of medical images corrupted by Poisson noise

Medical images obtained with emission processes are corrupted by noise of Poisson type. In the paper the denoising problem is modeled in a Bayesian statistical setting by a nonnegatively constrained minimization problem, where the objective function is constituted by a data fitting term, the Kullback-Leibler divergence, plus a regularization term, the Total Variation function, weighted by a regularization parameter. Aim of the paper is to propose an efficient numerical method for the solution of the constrained problem. The method is a Newton projection method, where the inner system is solved by the Conjugate Gradient method, preconditioned and implemented in an efficient way for this specific application. The numerical results on simulated and real medical images prove the effectiveness of the method, both for the accuracy and the computational cost.

Scaling techniques for gradient projection-type methods in astronomical image deblurring

The aim of this paper is to present a computational study on scaling techniques in gradient projection-type (GP-type) methods for deblurring of astronomical images corrupted by Poisson noise. In this case, the imaging problem is formulated as a non-negatively constrained minimization problem in which the objective function is the sum of a fit-to-data term, the Kullback–Leibler divergence, and a Tikhonov regularization term. The considered GP-type methods are formulated by a common iteration formula, where the scaling matrix and the step-length parameter characterize the different algorithms. Within this formulation, both first-order and Newton-like methods are analysed, with particular attention to those implementation features and behaviours relevant for the image restoration problem. The numerical experiments show that suited scaling strategies can enable the GP methods to quickly approximate accurate reconstructions and then are useful for designing effective image deblurring algorithms.

The active-set method for nonnegative regularization of linear ill-posed problems

Abstract In this work, we analyze the behavior of the active-set method for the nonnegative regularization of discrete ill-posed problems. In many applications, the solution of a linear ill-posed problem is known to be nonnegative. Standard Tikhonov regularization often provides an approximated solution with negative entries. We apply the active-set method to find a nonnegative approximate solution of the linear system starting from the Tikhonov regularized one. Our numerical experiments show that the active-set method is effective in reducing the oscillations in the Tikhonov regularized solution and in providing a nonnegative regularized solution of the original linear system.

An improved Newton projection method for nonnegative deblurring of Poisson-corrupted images with Tikhonov regularization

In this paper a quasi-Newton projection method for image deblurring is presented. The image restoration problem is mathematically formulated as a nonnegatively constrained minimization problem where the objective function is the sum of the Kullback–Leibler divergence, used to express fidelity to the data in the presence of Poisson noise, and of a Tikhonov regularization term. The Hessian of the objective function is approximated so that the Newton system can be efficiently solved by using Fast Fourier Transforms. The numerical results show the potential of the proposed method both in terms of relative error reduction and computational efficiency.

A projected Newton-CG method for nonnegative astronomical image deblurring

Astronomical images are usually assumed to be corrupted by a space-invariant Point Spread Function and Poisson noise. In this paper we propose an original projected inexact Newton method for the solution of the constrained nonnegative minimization problem arising from image deblurring. The problem is ill-posed and the objective function must be regularized. The inner system is inexactly solved by few Conjugate Gradient iterations. The convergence of the method is proved and its efficiency is tested on simulated astronomical blurred images. The results show that the method produces good reconstructed images at low computational cost.

A fast truncated Lagrange method for large-scale image restoration problems

In this work, we present a new method for the restoration of images degraded by noise and spatially invariant blur. In the proposed method, the original image restoration problem is replaced by an equality constrained minimization problem. A quasi-Newton method is applied to the first-order optimality conditions of the constrained problem. In each quasi-Newton iteration, the hessian of the Lagrangian is approximated by a circulant matrix and the Fast Fourier Transform is used to compute the quasi-Newton step. The quasi-Newton iteration is terminated according to the discrepancy principle. Results of numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the effectiveness and usefulness of the proposed method.

NPTool: a Matlab software for nonnegative image restoration with Newton projection methods

Several image restoration applications require the solution of nonnegatively constrained minimization problems whose objective function is typically constituted by the sum of a data fit function and a regularization function. Newton projection methods are very attractive because of their fast convergence, but they need an efficient implementation to avoid time consuming iterations. In this paper we present NPTool, a set of Matlab functions implementing Newton projection methods for image denoising and deblurring applications. They are specifically thought for two different data fit functions, the Least Squares function and the Kullback–Leibler divergence, and two regularization functions, Tikhonov and Total Variation, giving the opportunity of solving a large variety of restoration problems. The package is easily extensible to other linear or nonlinear data fit and regularization functions. Some examples of its use are included in the package and shown in this paper.

An Algorithm for Image Denoising with Automatic Noise Estimate

In this paper, we propose a general algorithm for image denoising when no a priori information on the noise is available. The image denoising problem is formulated as an inequality constrained minimization problem where the objective is a general convex regularization functional and the right-hand side of the constraint depends on the noise norm and is not known. The proposed method is an iterative procedure which, at each iteration, automatically computes both an approximation of the noise norm and an approximate solution of the minimization problem. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed automatic denoising procedure.

A Total Variation-Based Reconstruction Method for Dynamic MRI

In recent years, total variation (TV) regularization has become a popular and powerful tool for image restoration and enhancement. In this work, we apply TV minimization to improve the quality of dynamic magnetic resonance images. Dynamic magnetic resonance imaging is an increasingly popular clinical technique used to monitor spatio-temporal changes in tissue structure. Fast data acquisition is necessary in order to capture the dynamic process. Most commonly, the requirement of high temporal resolution is fulfilled by sacrificing spatial resolution. Therefore, the numerical methods have to address the issue of images reconstruction from limited Fourier data. One of the most successful techniques for dynamic imaging applications is the reduced-encoded imaging by generalized-series reconstruction method of Liang and Lauterbur. However, even if this method utilizes a priori data for optimal image reconstruction, the produced dynamic images are degraded by truncation artifacts, most notably Gibbs ringing, due to the spatial low resolution of the data. We use a TV regularization strategy in order to reduce these truncation artifacts in the dynamic images. The resulting TV minimization problem is solved by the fixed point iteration method of Vogel and Oman. The results of test problems with simulated and real data are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in reducing the truncation artifacts of the reconstructed images.