Image de-noising using wavelets

J. N. Ellinas, T. Mandadelis, A. Tzortzis, L. Aslanoglou

T.E.I. of Piraeus, Department of Electronic Computer Systems

Abstract
In this paper, we propose an adaptive method of image de-noising in the wavelet
subband domain. This approach is based on threshold estimation for each subband of
the wavelet decomposition of a noise-contaminated image, by considering that the
subband coefficients have a Generalized Gaussian Distribution (GGD). Under this
framework, the proposed technique estimates the threshold level by applying a robust
median estimator on either all the detail coefficients or every detail subband of each
decomposition level. Hence, it improves the performance of the Matlab 2-D denoising function, which defines a global threshold for all the subbands of a Discrete
Wavelet Transform (DWT). Also, the effectiveness of the criteria, which are the same
with those of Matlab, that define the threshold levels is evaluated. The experimental
evaluation of our proposition shows that it removes noise significantly and more
effectively than the existed Matlab function.
Keywords: Discrete Wavelet Transform; Image denoising.

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Gaussian ,

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1. Introduction
An image is often corrupted by noise during its acquisition or transmission. The
de-noising process is to remove the noise while retaining and not distorting the quality
of the processed image. The traditional way of image de-noising is filtering. Recently,
a lot of research about non-linear methods of signal de-noising has been developed.

These methods are mainly based on thresholding the Discrete Wavelet Transform
(DWT) coefficients, which have been affected by additive white Gaussian noise.
Since the work of Donoho and Johnstone [1]-[4], there has been a lot of research
on the way of defining the threshold levels and their type (i.e. hard or soft threshold).
Matlab wavelet toolbox includes functions for 1-D or 2-D de-noising [5], which are
based on Donohos proposed thresholds. Nevertheless, in the 2-D case, there is no
option for the selection of a threshold criterion and the threshold is not level
dependent. In this work, a new 2-D Matlab function is developed, employing the same
thresholding criteria as in Matlab, which has the option to define three different
methods of threshold level estimation. According to the proposed methods, the noisecontaminated image is decomposed by a DWT. The transform coefficients within the
subbands are modeled as independent identically distributed (i.i.d) random variables
with Generalized Gaussian Distribution (GGD). The threshold is estimated under
three different approaches and the coefficients are killed or remain unchanged or
shrinked, depending on the type of thresholding (i.e. hard or soft). The first method
estimates the threshold level by a median estimator, which implements the noise
standard deviation from the coefficients of the diagonal subband of the first level (i.e.
HH1) and is called global. The second method refers to a median estimator, which is
applied on all the detail coefficients of each level, so is level dependent. Eventually,
the third approach employs a median estimator which is applied on the horizontalvertical-diagonal detail coefficients of each subband, so is detail dependent. The
experimental evaluations of the proposed adaptive methods of image de-noising
shows that both the subjective and objective performance is superior to Matlabs 2-D
de-noising function.
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 is a brief review of the discrete
wavelet transform. In section 3, the concept of wavelet thresholding is developed.
Section 4 explains the proposed method of de-noising based on wavelet
decomposition. Experimental evaluation is performed in section 5 and finally
conclusions are given in section 6.
2. The discrete wavelet transform (DWT)
The mathematical approach to the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is based on
the fact that a function f(t) can be linearly represented as:
f (t ) = a k k (t )

(1)

where ak are the analysis coefficients and k the analyzing functions, which are called
basis functions, if the above analysis is unique. If the basis functions are orthogonal,
that is,

k (t ), l (t ) = k (t ) l (t )dt = 0 for k l

(2)

the coefficients can be estimated from the following equation:

a k = f (t ), k (t ) = f (t ) k (t ) dt

(3)

where f(t) is given from (1). For example, the orthogonal analysis functions for the
Fourier transform are the sin(k0t) and cos(k0t). In general, a 2-D signal may be
transformed by DWT as:
f (t ) = j ,k j ,k (t )
k

(4)

where j,k and j,k are the transform coefficients and basis functions respectively.
Equation (4) is the inverse transform, given j,k and j,k. Therefore, a function f(t) may
be represented by transform coefficients, which are estimated from the internal
product of that function with an orthogonal basis function. Inversely, the desired
function may be reconstructed from these coefficients and the basis function. These
basis functions are called wavelets [6], [9], [10].
Another consideration of the wavelets is the subbnad coding theory or
multiresolution analysis [11]. The signal passes successively through pairs of low pass
and high pass filters, the analysis filters, which produce the transform coefficients.
These coefficients, if pass successively through the synthesis filters, may reproduce
the initial signal at the decoders side. The synthesis filters have a specific relationship
with the analysis filters in order to provide perfect reconstruction and constitute the
Perfect Reconstruction Bank (PRB). The orthogonal relation among the filters is their
most basic property, as the produced coefficients must preserve the energy of the
initial signal (Parsevals theorem).

(Downsampling)
(a)

(Upsampling)
(Decomposition)

(b)

(Reconstruction)

(c)

Fig. 1 Analysis and synthesis of a 1-D signal with subband coding.

(a) DWT and Inverse DWT of 1-D signal; (b) DWT tree; (c) Wavelet packet tree.

Fig. 1 shows the analysis of a 1-D signal with the subband coding theory, which is
equivalent to wavelet decomposition. The low pass filters represent the
approximation of the signal or its dc component and the high pass filters represent
the details or its high frequency components. The successive analysis of the low
pass component only, is called wavelet decomposition, Fig. 1(b), whereas the analysis
of both the low and high pass components is called wavelet packet decomposition,
Fig.1 (c). The samplers are used so that the total number of the produced coefficients
to be the same as the number of signal samples. Hence, an input signal S may be
equivalently analysed as:
S=A3+D3+D2+D1 or S=A2+D2+D1 or S=A1+D1
Similarly, by using wavelet packet decomposition, the signal may be analysed as:
S=A1+AAD3+DAD3+ADD3+DDD3
The decomposition tree is called wavelet tree and is transferred with its coefficients
to the decoder for the reconstruction of the initial signal.
The wavelet transform provides an appropriate basis for image handling because
of its beneficial features. The main assets of the wavelet transform are:
The ability to compact most of the signals energy into a few transformation
coefficients, which is called energy compaction.
The ability to capture and represent effectively low frequency components (such
as image backgrounds) as well as high frequency transients (such as image edges).
The variable resolution decomposition with almost uncorrelated coefficients.
The ability of a progressive transmission, which facilitates the reception of an
image at different qualities.
In that sense, the existence of small coefficients is more likely to be due to the noise
contamination, whereas the large coefficients contain significant image details.
Hence, the small magnitude coefficients may be thresholded without affecting the
large ones and therefore the quality of the image. The thresholding techniques are
simple non-linear techniques that eliminate all the subband coefficients that their
magnitude is under a certain threshold. The remaining coefficients remain either
unaffected, which is called hard-thresholding or modified, which is called soft
thresholding. The soft thresholding techniques eliminate the coefficients with
magnitude less than the pre-specified threshold and shrink the rest of them. The
reconstruction of the clean image, after the thresholding process, is performed with
the inverse wavelet transform. The quality of the reconstructed image, which will
contain some noise and may be distorted, is measured either subjectively by an optical
evaluation or objectively by the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR).
3. Wavelet thresholding
Suppose x={xij , i=1,2,,M and j=1,2,,N}is an image of M x N pixels, which is
corrupted by independent and identically distributed (i.i.d) zero mean, white Gaussian
noise nij with standard deviation n. The noise signal can be denoted as nij ~ N (0,n2).
This noise may corrupt the signal in a transmission channel. The observed, noise
contaminated, image is y={yij , i=1,2,,M and j=1,2,,N}. Therefore, the noised
image can be expressed as:
4

yij = xij + nij

(5)

The object of a de-noising process is to estimate image x from the noised image y, so
that the Mean Square Error (MSE) to be minimum. Let W and W -1 denote the two
dimensional DWT and its inverse respectively. Then, the original signal, its noised
version and the noise have a matrix form in the transform domain that includes the
subband coefficients.
X=W x , Y=W y , V=W n

(6)

Fig. 2 shows the two level DWT of a 2-D signal, which consists of the subbands LL2
(low frequency or approximation coefficients), HL2 (horizontal details), LH2 (vertical
details), HH2 (diagonal details) and the first level details HL1, LH1, HH1 [6], [8].

LL2

HL2
HL1

LH2

HH2

LH1

HH1

Fig. 2 Two level Discrete Wavelet Transform

Therefore equation (5), in the spatial domain, becomes in the transform domain as
follows:
Y=X+V

(7)

where X, Y and V are the transform domains of the original image, its noised version
and the noise respectively. The orthogonal property of the transform insures that the

noise in the transform domain is also of Gaussian nature. The de-noising algorithms,
which are based on thresholding, suggest that each coefficient of every detail subband
is compared to a threshold level and is either retained or killed if its magnitude is
greater or less respectively. The approximation coefficients are not submitted in this
process, since on one hand they carry the most important information about the image
and on the other hand the noise mostly affects the high frequency subbands.
The type of the threshold is either hard or soft. Fig. 3 indicates the two types of
thresholding, which can be expressed analytically as follows.
y = x if | x | > T
Hard threshold:

(8)
y = 0 if | x | < T

Soft threshold:

y = sign (x) ( | x | - T)

(9)

where x is the input signal, y is the signal after threshold and T is the threshold level.

0
(a)

(b)

(c)

Fig. 3 Threshold types: (a) Original signal; (b) Hard; (c) Soft
The hard type does not affect the coefficients that are greater than the threshold level,
whereas the soft type causes shrinkage to these coefficients. In the present work, both
types of threshold are evaluated but hard thresholding may create abrupt artifacts
because of its discontinuous nature. The reconstructed image is a de-noised estimate
of x, which is produced by the inverse DWT.

x = W 1Y

(10)

where Y consists of the thresholded subbands of the noised image.

The threshold level is estimated by various methods called thresholding criteria,
which are based on the minimization of the averaged squared error.

arg min[

1
N

i (Yi X i )2 ]

(11)

where Xi and Yi are all the detail subbands coefficients of the original image and the
noised image after thresholding respectively.
4. The proposed method of de-noising

The noise-corrupted image, which is expressed as y = x + nn, where n is the

standard deviation of noise, according to equation (1), is subjected to a DWT. The
threshold level is usually estimated for n = 1. Therefore, when n is different than
unity there should be a threshold rescaling. Estimating the noise standard deviation in
one of the following ways may perform this rescaling of the threshold level.
a) A robust median estimator of the highest subband diagonal coefficients (i.e. HH1)
estimates the noise standard deviation [2].
^

n =

median

Yij

0.6745

(12)

where Yij represents the coefficients of HH1 subband. The threshold level is
rescaled according to the thresholding criterion, which is selected and is applied in
every coefficient of all the subbands. This case is mentioned as global threshold.
b) The same median estimator is employed in order to determine the standard
deviation of noise for each level separately. In this case Yij represents all the detail
coefficients of the corresponding level (i.e. coefficients of the horizontal, vertical
and diagonal subbands). The threshold level is rescaled according to the selected
thresholding criterion and is applied on every coefficient of the corresponding
level. Hence, the number of the threshold levels is equal to the number of
decomposition levels. This case is mentioned as level dependent threshold.
c) The same median estimator is applied on the horizontal, vertical and diagonal
detail coefficients of each level. The matrix Yij represents the corresponding detail
coefficients of each level. Therefore, the number of the threshold levels is equal to
the number of decomposition levels times the decomposition subbands of every
level, which are three in the 2-D case. This case is mentioned as detail dependent
threshold.
The proposed de-noising algorithm is summed up to the following steps:
A four level DWT transforms the noise-corrupted image.
Estimate the noise standard deviation with one of the above three proposed
methods by employing a thresholding criterion.
For each subband (except the low pass or approximation subband) apply hard or
soft threshold to the subband coefficients.
Reconstruct the image by employing the inverse DWT.

5. Experimental results

The experimental evaluation is performed on two gray scale images like Lena
and Barbara of size 512 X 512 pixels at different noise levels. The wavelet
transform employs Daubechiess least asymmetric compactly supported wavelet with
eight vanishing moments [7] at four levels of decomposition. The objective quality of
the reconstructed image is measured by:
PSNR = 10 log10

2552
mse

(13)

where mse is the mean square error between the original (i.e. x) and the de-noised
image (i.e. x ) with size M x N:
mse =

M N

1
[ x(i, j ) x (i, j )]2
MxN i =1 j =1

(14)

The thresholding criteria, which are used for the evaluation of the proposed de-noising
methods are the rigrsure, heursure, sqtwolog, minimaxi, as they are
mentioned in bibliography.
Firstly, the three proposed methods are evaluated. Tables 1, 2 and 3 show the
performance of each method for soft thresholding and for each of the above
mentioned thresholding criteria. It is apparent that the rigrsure thresholding criterion
for all the proposed methods provides better results and for this criterion the global
median estimator outperforms the level median estimator which in turn provides
better results than the detail median estimator. Table 4 illustrates the comparative
performance of the best global estimator, which employs the best rigrsure
thresholding criterion, for soft and hard thresholding. These results prove that soft
thresholding outperforms hard thresholding from 2.6 dB to 4 dB and for that reason it
is almost always used in image de-noising applications.
Table 1. Performance of the global median estimator

rigrsure
heursure
sqtwolog
minimaxi
rigrsure
heursure
sqtwolog
minimaxi

Noise Standard Deviation

10
15
20
25
PSNR (dB) - LENA
33.06
31.02
29.67
28.58
33.05
30.77
29.21
28.41
27.36
25.88
24.84
24.07
28.64
27.08
25.97
25.15
PSNR (dB) - BARBARA
30.54
28.18
26.68
25.59
30.54
27.69
26.45
25.50
23.68
22.53
21.86
21.40
24.90
23.55
22.72
22.16

30

27.82
27.75
23.44
24.46
24.71
24.67
21.06
21.74

Table 2. Performance of the level dependent median estimator

Noise Standard Deviation
10
15
20
25
PSNR (dB) - LENA
30.06
28.78
27.87
rigrsure 31.46
29.67
27.37
26.88
heursure 31.15
22.86
22.33
21.98
sqtwolog 23.34
24.09
23.46
23.01
minimaxi 24.67
PSNR (dB) - BARBARA
26.77
25.58
24.79
rigrsure 28.58
25.99
24.50
23.78
heursure 27.13
20.36
20.08
19.92
sqtwolog 20.80
21.31
20.88
20.63
minimaxi 21.90

30

27.19
26.43
21.70
22.66
24.06
23.31
19.80
20.44

Table 3. Performance of the detail dependent median estimator

rigrsure
heursure
sqtwolog
minimaxi
rigrsure
heursure
sqtwolog
minimaxi

Noise Standard Deviation

10
15
20
25
PSNR (dB) - LENA
30.33
29.37
27.97
27.30
30.32
28.72
27.66
27.13
22.32
22.00
21.68
21.48
23.20
22.85
22.45
22.22
PSNR (dB) - BARBARA
27.78
26.48
25.29
24.32
27.78
26.14
25.14
24
20.25
19.98
19.79
19.63
21.15
20.74
20.43
20.19

30

26.58
26.53
21.26
21.94
23.59
22.46
19.52
19.99

Table 4. Comparative performance of the best de-noising method (global median

estimator and rigrsure thresholding criterion) for hard or soft thresholding

hard
soft
hard
soft

Noise Standard Deviation

10
15
20
25
PSNR (dB) - LENA
30.39
27.46
25.87
24.47
33.06
31.02
29.67
28.58
PSNR (dB) - BARBARA
29.09
26.16
24.07
22.71
30.54
28.18
26.68
25.59

30

23.96
27.82
21.68
24.71

34
Matlab 2-D denoising function
unique median estimator
level median estimator
detail median estimator

32

PSNR (dB)

30

28

26

24

22
10

12

14

16

18
20
22
Standard Deviation

24

26

28

30

Fig. 4 Comparative performance of the proposed de-noising methods

Fig. 4 demonstrates the performance of the three proposed methods, which employ
soft thresholding and the rigrsure thresholding criterion, versus the Matlab 2-D denoising function for the test image Lena. All the proposed methods present
significant better performance, which ranges from 3 dB to 6 dB for the whole
examined range, than the Matlab 2-D de-noising function.
Finally, Fig. 5 shows the effect of the compared methods to a noise contaminated
image with noise of standard deviation 30 (strong interference). It is obvious that the
subjective optical quality of the de-noised image is the best for the global median
estimator, becomes slightly worse for the level estimator, the detail estimator and
much worse for the Matlab de-noising function. It is quite apparent that the Matlabs
de-noising function creates image blurring and some annoying artifacts, Fig. 5(c),
whereas the proposed methods reduce significantly these effects and give to the denoised image smoother feeling, Fig. 5(d, e, f). The best optical quality is presented by
the global median estimator and the reason is that it produces more accurate estimate
of the noise standard deviation as the diagonal coefficients of the first decomposition
subband seem to have statistical properties closer to noise. The rest two of the
proposed methods present slightly worse characteristics, but the subjective optical
quality of the de-noised image is quite good.

10

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

Fig. 5 Comparative performance of the proposed methods.

(a) Original image; (b) noised image; (c) Matlab de-noising; (d) Global estimator;
(e) Level estimator; (f) Detail estimator

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6. Conclusions

In this paper, a simple global and two subband adaptive median estimators are
proposed and evaluated with respect to the Matlabs 2-D de-noising function in order
to recover an image from noise contamination effectively. They are all based on the
wavelet decomposition of the image and the Generalized Gaussian Distribution
modeling of the subband coefficients. The threshold estimation is either detail or
subband level dependent. The proposed methods are tested for various thresholding
criteria and use soft thresholding to provide smoothness and better edge preservation,
avoiding the discontinuity character of the hard thresholding methods. The
experimental evaluation showed that the proposed methods have far better
performance than the Matlab 2-D de-noising function that uses global thresholding.

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[5]
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