Boundary-adaptive Despeckling : Simulation Study

In this study, an iterative maximum a posteriori (MAP) approach using a Bayesian model of Markovrandom field (MRF) was proposed for despeckling images that contains speckle. Image process is assumed to combine the random fields associated with the observed intensity process and the image texture process respectively. The objective measure for determining the optimal restoration of this "double compound stochastic" image process is based on Bayes' theorem, and the MAP estimation employs the Point-Jacobian iteration to obtain the optimal solution. In the proposed algorithm, MRF is used to quantify the spatial interaction probabilistically, that is, to provide a type of prior information on the image texture and the neighbor window of any size is defined for contextual information on a local region. However, the window of a certain size would result in using wrong information for the estimation from adjacent regions with different characteristics at the pixels close to or on boundary. To overcome this problem, the new method is designed to use less information from more distant neighbors as the pixel is closer to boundary. It can reduce the possibility to involve the pixel values of adjacent region with different characteristics. The proximity to boundary is estimated using a non-uniformity measurement based on standard deviation of local region. The new scheme has been extensively evaluated using simulation data, and the experimental results show a considerable improvement in despeckling the images that contain speckle.