Yiqiu Dong

Yiqiu Dong, Per Christian Hansen, Michiel E. Hochstenbach et al.

We consider algebraic iterative reconstruction methods with applications in image reconstruction. In particular, we are concerned with methods based on an unmatched projector/backprojector pair; i.e., the backprojector is not the exact adjoint or transpose of the forward projector. Such situations are common in large-scale computed tomography, and we consider the common situation where the method does not converge due to the nonsymmetry of the iteration matrix. We propose a modified algorithm that incorporates a small shift parameter, and we give the conditions that guarantee convergence of this method to a fixed point of a slightly perturbed problem. We also give perturbation bounds for this fixed point. Moreover, we discuss how to use Krylov subspace methods to efficiently estimate the leftmost eigenvalue of a certain matrix to select a proper shift parameter. The modified algorithm is illustrated with test problems from computed tomography.

Martin Burger, Yiqiu Dong, Michael Hintermüller

Relying on the co-area formula, an exact relaxation framework for minimizing objectives involving the total variation of a binary valued function (of bounded variation) is presented. The underlying problem class covers many important applications ranging from binary image restoration, segmentation, minimal compliance topology optimization to the optimal design of composite membranes and many more. The relaxation approach turns the binary constraint into a box constraint. It is shown that thresholding a solution of the relaxed problem almost surely yields a solution of the original binary-valued problem. Furthermore, stability of solutions under data perturbations is studied, and, for applications such as structure optimization, the inclusion of volume constraints is considered. For the efficient numerical solution of the relaxed problem, a locally superlinearly convergent algorithm is proposed which is based on an exact penalization technique, Fenchel duality, and a semismooth Newton approach. The paper ends by a report on numerical results for several applications in particular in mathematical image processing.

Yiqiu Dong, Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb

In this paper we propose a new approach for tomographic reconstruction with spatially varying regularization parameter. Our work is based on the SA-TV image restoration model proposed in [3] where an automated parameter selection rule for spatially varying parameter has been proposed. Their parameter selection rule, however, only applies if measured imaging data are defined in image domain, e.g. for image denoising and image deblurring problems. By introducing an auxiliary variable in their model we show here that this idea can indeed by extended to general inverse imaging problems such as tomographic reconstruction where measurements are not in image domain. We demonstrate the validity of the proposed approach and its effectiveness for computed tomography reconstruction, delivering reconstruction results that are significantly improved compared the state-of-the-art.

Zhitao Li, Yiqiu Dong, Xueying Zeng

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of hyperparameter estimation within the empirical Bayes framework (EBF) for sparse learning. By studying the influence of hyperpriors on the solution of EBF, we establish a theoretical connection between the choice of the hyperprior and the sparsity as well as the local optimality of the resulting solutions. We show that some strictly increasing hyperpriors, such as half-Laplace and half-generalized Gaussian with the power in $(0,1)$, effectively promote sparsity and improve solution stability with respect to measurement noise. Based on this analysis, we adopt a proximal alternating linearized minimization (PALM) algorithm with convergence guaranties for both convex and concave hyperpriors. Extensive numerical tests on two-dimensional image deblurring problems demonstrate that introducing appropriate hyperpriors significantly promotes the sparsity of the solution and enhances restoration accuracy. Furthermore, we illustrate the influence of the noise level and the ill-posedness of inverse problems to EBF solutions.

Remi Laumont, Yiqiu Dong, Martin Skovgaard Andersen

This paper studies two classes of sampling methods for the solution of inverse problems, namely Randomize-Then-Optimize (RTO), which is rooted in sensitivity analysis, and Langevin methods, which are rooted in the Bayesian framework. The two classes of methods correspond to different assumptions and yield samples from different target distributions. We highlight the main conceptual and theoretical differences between the two approaches and compare them from a practical point of view by tackling two classical inverse problems in imaging: deblurring and inpainting. We show that the choice of the sampling method has a significant impact on the quality of the reconstruction and that the RTO method is more robust to the choice of the parameters.

Yiqiu Dong, Chunlin Wu, Shi Yan

In this paper, we propose a fast method for simultaneous reconstruction and segmentation (SRS) in X-ray computed tomography (CT). Our work is based on the SRS model where Bayes' rule and the maximum a posteriori (MAP) are used on hidden Markov measure field model (HMMFM). The original method leads to a logarithmic-summation (log-sum) term, which is non-separable to the classification index. The minimization problem in the model was solved by using constrained gradient descend method, Frank-Wolfe algorithm, which is very time-consuming especially when dealing with large-scale CT problems. The starting point of this paper is the commutativity of log-sum operations, where the log-sum problem could be transformed into a sum-log problem by introducing an auxiliary variable. The corresponding sum-log problem for the SRS model is separable. After applying alternating minimization method, this problem turns into several easy-to-solve convex sub-problems. In the paper, we also study an improved model by adding Tikhonov regularization, and give some convergence results. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms could produce comparable results with the original SRS method with much less CPU time.

Rasmus Dalgas Kongskov, Yiqiu Dong, Kim Knudsen

In inverse problems, prior information and a priori-based regularization techniques play important roles. In this paper, we focus on image restoration problems, especially on restoring images whose texture mainly follow one direction. In order to incorporate the directional information, we propose a new directional total generalized variation (DTGV) functional, which is based on total generalized variation (TGV) by Bredies \textit{et al}. [SIAM J. Imaging Sci., 3 (2010)]. After studying the mathematical properties of DTGV, we utilize it as regularizer and propose the L$^2$-DTGV variational model for solving image restoration problems. Due to the requirement of the directional information in DTGV, we give a direction estimation algorithm, and then apply a primal-dual algorithm to solve the minimization problem. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method for restoring the directional images. In comparison with isotropic regularizers like total variation and TGV, the improvement of texture preservation and noise removal is significant.

Martin Burger, Yiqiu Dong, Federica Sciacchitano

One of the tasks of the Bayesian inverse problem is to find a good estimate based on the posterior probability density. The most common point estimators are the conditional mean (CM) and maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimates, which correspond to the mean and the mode of the posterior, respectively. From a theoretical point of view it has been argued that the MAP estimate is only in an asymptotic sense a Bayes estimator for the uniform cost function, while the CM estimate is a Bayes estimator for the means squared cost function. Recently, it has been proven that the MAP estimate is a proper Bayes estimator for the Bregman cost if the image is corrupted by Gaussian noise. In this work we extend this result to other noise models with log-concave likelihood density, by introducing two related Bregman cost functions for which the CM and the MAP estimates are proper Bayes estimators. Moreover, we also prove that the CM estimate outperforms the MAP estimate, when the error is measured in a certain Bregman distance, a result previously unknown also in the case of additive Gaussian noise.