Image preprocessing for rotation-invariant pattern recognition in the presence of signal-dependent noise

I propose a new method that ensures efficient rotation-invariant pattern recognition in the presence of signal-dependent noise by combining the application of rotation-invariant correlation filters with preprocessing of the noisy input images. The preprocessing uses local suboptimal estimators derived from estimation theory and implies an a priori knowledge of a model describing the noise source. The image noise sources considered are speckle and film-grain noise. Four different metrics are used to analyze the correlation performance of the circular-harmonic filter, the phase-only circular-harmonic filter, and the binary phase-only circular-harmonic filter, with and without a preprocessing. Computer simulations show that signal-dependent noise can seriously degrade the performance of the phase-only circular-harmonic filter and the binary phase-only circular-harmonic filter. The most severe indication of correlation-performance degradation is the occurrence of false alarms in 15% to 20% of noise realizations of the correlation. Preprocessing increases the correlation-peak signal-to-noise ratio significantly and reduces the false-alarm probability by one to two orders of magnitude. (C) 1996 Optical Society of America