A Nonlinear Structure Tensor with the Diffusivity Matrix Composed of the Image Gradient

Abstract

We propose a nonlinear partial differential equation (PDE) for regularizing a tensor which contains the first derivative information of an image such as strength of edges and a direction of the gradient of the image. Unlike a typical diffusivity matrix which consists of derivatives of a tensor data, we propose a diffusivity matrix which consists of the tensor data itself, i.e., derivatives of an image. This allows directional smoothing for the tensor along edges which are not in the tensor but in the image. That is, a tensor in the proposed PDE is diffused fast along edges of an image but slowly across them. Since we have a regularized tensor which properly represents the first derivative information of an image, the tensor is useful to improve the quality of image denoising, image enhancement, corner detection, and ramp preserving denoising. We also prove the uniqueness and existence of solution to the proposed PDE.