Nonlinear image representation via local multiscale orientation

David Hammond , Eero P Simoncelli

Published in:
Technical Report TR2005-875, 27 September 2005
Computer Science Department,
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
New York University


We present a nonlinear image representation based on multiscale local orientation measurements. Specifically, an image is first decomposed using a two-orientation steerable pyramid, a tight-frame representation in which the basis functions are directional derivatives of a radially symmetric blurring operator. The pair of subbands at each scale are thus gradients of progressively blurred copies of the original image. We then discard the magnitude information and retain only the orientation of each gradient vector. We develop a method for reconstructing the original image from this orientation information using an algorithm based on projection onto convex sets, and demonstrate its robustness to quantization.
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