Patent ID: 9230161
Filing Date: 2016-01-05
CPC Classification: G06K,G06T

Claim Text:
1. A computer implemented MLBM3D (Multiple Layer Block Matching 3D Filtering) method of denoising an image including high contrast regions comprising: a) receiving a noisy image; b) generating a plurality of blocks covering the noisy image; c) selecting one of the plurality of blocks as a reference block and grouping other blocks including similar image representations with the selected reference block to form a block cluster; d) collaboratively filtering the block cluster to form a single-layer estimate of the block cluster; e) classifying the block cluster as one of a single-layer block cluster and a multi-layer block cluster based on the single-layer estimate; f) for a multi-layer block cluster, decompose each of the blocks associated with the multi-layer block cluster into multiple layers; g) collaboratively filtering at least two of the multiple layers to form at least two, respective, filtered block layers; h) assembling the filtered block layers to form a multi-layer estimate of the block cluster; i) performing steps c)-h) for a plurality of the reference blocks; and j) aggregating the single-layer estimates of the classified single-layer block clusters and the multiple-layer estimates of the classified multi-layer block clusters to form a denoised image representation of the noisy image.