• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.1108-1118
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• 2019

Non-local means (NLM) algorithm is an effective and successful denoising method, but it is computationally heavy. To deal with this obstacle, we propose a novel NLM algorithm with fuzzy metric (FM-NLM) for image denoising in this paper. A new feature metric of visual features with fuzzy metric is utilized to measure the similarity between image pixels in the presence of Gaussian noise. Similarity measures of luminance and structure information are calculated using a fuzzy metric. A smooth kernel is constructed with the proposed fuzzy metric instead of the Gaussian weighted L2 norm kernel. The fuzzy metric and smooth kernel computationally simplify the NLM algorithm and avoid the filter parameters. Meanwhile, the proposed FM-NLM using visual structure preferably preserves the original undistorted image structures. The performance of the improved method is visually and quantitatively comparable with or better than that of the current state-of-the-art NLM-based denoising algorithms.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.825-836
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• 2016

In this paper, a speed-up technique for the non-local means (NLM) image denoising method based on local binary descriptor (LBD) is proposed. In the NLM, most of the computation time is spent on searching for non-local similar patches in the search window. The local binary descriptor which represents the structure of patch as binary strings is employed to speed up the search process in the NLM. The descriptor allows for a fast and accurate preselection of non-local similar patches by bitwise operations. Using this approach, a tradeoff between time-saving and noise removal can be obtained. Simulations exhibit that despite being principally constructed for speed, the proposed algorithm outperforms in terms of denoising quality as well. Furthermore, a parallel implementation on GPU brings NLM-LBD to real-time image denoising.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.1527-1532
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• 2023

The noise reduction algorithm using the non-local means (NLM) approach is very efficient in nuclear medicine imaging. In this study, the applicability of the NLM noise reduction algorithm in single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) images with a brain phantom and the optimization of the NLM algorithm by changing the smoothing factors according to various reconstruction methods are investigated. Brain phantom images were reconstructed using filtered back projection (FBP) and ordered subset expectation maximization (OSEM). The smoothing factor of the NLM noise reduction algorithm determined the optimal coefficient of variation (COV) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) results at a value of 0.020 in the FBP and OSEM reconstruction methods. We confirmed that the FBP- and OSEM-based SPECT images using the algorithm applied with the optimal smoothing factor improved the COV and CNR by 66.94% and 8.00% on average, respectively, compared to those of the original image. In conclusion, an optimized smoothing factor was derived from the NLM approach-based algorithm in brain SPECT images and may be applicable to various nuclear medicine imaging techniques in the future.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.679-684
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• 2023

Venous puncture is widely used to obtain blood samples for pathological examination. Because the invasive venipuncture method using a needle is repeatedly performed, the pain suffered by the patient increases, so our research team pre-developed a miniaturized near-infrared (NIR) imaging system in advance. To improve the image quality of the acquired NIR images, this study aims to model the non-local means (NLM) algorithm, which is well known to be efficient in noise reduction, and analyze its applicability in the system. The developed NIR imaging system is based on the principle that infrared rays pass through dichroic and long-pass filters and are detected by a CMOS sensor module. The proposed NLM algorithm is modeled based on the principle of replacing the pixel from which noise is to be removed with a value that reflects the distances between surrounding pixels. After acquiring an NIR image with a central wavelength of 850 nm, the NLM algorithm was applied to segment the final vein area through histogram equalization. As a result, the coefficient of variation of the NIR image of the vein using the NLM algorithm was 0.247 on average, which was an excellent result compared to conventional filtering methods. In addition, the dice similarity coefficient value of the NLM algorithm was improved by 62.91 and 9.40%, respectively, compared to the median filter and total variation methods. In conclusion, we demonstrated that the NLM algorithm can acquire accurate segmentation of veins acquired with a NIR imaging system.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.136-142
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• 2016

This paper presents a non-local means (NLM) denoising algorithm based on a new weighting function using a mixed norm. The fidelity of the difference between an anchor patch and the reference patch in the NLM denoising depends on noise level and local activity. This paper introduces a new weighting function based on a mixed norm type of which the order is determined by noise level and local activity of an anchor patch, so that the performance of the NLM denoising can be enhanced. Experimental results demonstrate the objective and subjective capability of the proposed algorithm. In addition, it was verified that the proposed algorithm can be used to improve the performance of the other $l_2$ norm based non-local means denoising algorithms

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.60-65
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• 2016

This paper introduces the non-local means (NLM) algorithm for image denoising, and also introduces an improved algorithm which is based on the principal component analysis (PCA). To do the PCA, a covariance matrix of a given image should be evaluated first. If we let the size of neighborhood patches of the NLM S × S², and let the number of pixels Q, a matrix multiplication of the size S² × Q is required to compute a covariance matrix. According to the characteristic of images, such computation is inefficient. Therefore, this paper proposes an efficient method to compute the covariance matrix by sampling the pixels. After sampling, the covariance matrix can be computed with matrices of the size S² × floor (Width/l) × (Height/l).

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2018.11a
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• pp.73-76
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• 2018

A Gaussian noise is caused by surrounding environment or channel interference when transmitting image. The noise reduces not only image quality degradation but also high-level image processing performance. The Non-Local Means (NLM) filter finds similarity in the neighboring sets of pixels to remove noise and assigns weights according to similarity. The weighted average is calculated based on the weight. The NLM filter method shows low noise cancellation performance and high complexity in the process of finding the similarity using weight allocation and neighbor set. In order to solve these problems, we propose an algorithm that shows an excellent noise reduction performance by using Summed Square Image (SSI) to reduce the complexity and applying the weighting function based on a cosine Gaussian kernel function. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.153-163
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• 2015

This paper proposes a rain detection and removal algorithm that is robust against camera motion in video sequences. In detection part, the proposed algorithm initially detects possible rain streaks by using intensity properties and spatial properties. Then, the rain streak candidates are selected based on Gaussian distribution model. In removal part, a non-rain block matching algorithm is performed between adjacent frames to find similar blocks to the block that has rain pixels. If the similar blocks to the block are obtained, the rain region of the block is reconstructed by non-local means (NLM) filter using the similar neighbors. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the previous works in terms of subjective visual quality of de-rained video sequences.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.61-67
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• 2017

Low-dose X-ray fluoroscopic image sequences to avoid radiation exposure risk are contaminated by quantum noise. To restore these noisy sequences, we propose a 3D nonlocal means (NLM) filter based on stochastic distancesed can be applied to the denoising of X-ray fluoroscopic image sequences. The stochastic distance is obtained within motion-compensated noise filtering support to remove the Poisson noise. In this paper, motion-adaptive weight which reflected the frame similarity is proposed to restore the noisy sequences without motion artifact. Experimental results including comparisons with conventional algorithms for real X-ray fluoroscopic image sequences show the proposed algorithm has a good performance in both visual and quantitative criteria.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2011.11a
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• pp.298-301
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• 2011

Edge detection is an base research task in the field of image processing. Edge detection can be regarded as a technique for locating pixels of abrupt gray-level change. So with Gradient method, it can be computed easily. But it can't satisfy human naked eye. so in this paper, new algorithm based on the NLM(Non Local Means) is proposed for good performance for human naked eye.