Restoration of piecewise-constant images by mean-field annealing

Abstract

An algorithm is described that removes the noise from images without causing blurring or other distortions of edges. The problem of noise removal is posed as a restoration of an uncorrupted image, given additive noise. The restoration problem is solved by using a new minimization strategy called mean-field annealing (MFA). An a priori statistical model of the image is chosen that drives the minimization toward solutions that are locally homogeneous. The strategy for MFA is derived, and the resulting algorithm is discussed. Applications of the algorithm to both synthetic images and real images are presented.