Improving performance of wavelet-based image de-noising algorithm using complex diffusion process

Image enhancement and de-noising is an essential pre-processing step in many image processing algorithms. In any image de-noising algorithm, the main concern is to keep the interesting structures of the image. Such interesting structures often correspond to the discontinuities (edges). In this paper, we present a new algorithm for image noise reduction based on the combination of complex diffusion process and wavelet thresholding. In the existing wavelet thresholding methods, the noise reduction is limited, because the approximate coefficients containing the main information of the image are kept unchanged. Since noise affects both the approximate and detail coefficients, the proposed algorithm for noise reduction applies the complex diffusion process on the approximation band in order to alleviate the deficiency of the existing wavelet thresholding methods. The algorithm has been examined using a variety of standard images and its performance has been compared against several de-noising algorithms known from the prior art. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm preserves the edges better and in most cases, improves the measured visual quality of the de-noised images in comparison to the existing methods known from the literature. The improvement is obtained without excessive computational cost, and the algorithm works well on a wide range of different types of noise.