Patent Document ID: 5526446
Application ID: 07764567
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. Apparatus for the enhancement of an image so as to remove noise and other artifacts therefrom, comprising: means for scanning said image to produce a scanned image; means coupled to the said scanning means for convolving a given neighborhood in said scanned image into a number of sets of transform coefficients, each set having a predetermined spatial scale corresponding to a predetermined spatial frequency band characteristic and each set of transform coefficients having been derived from convolving said image with a number of analysis filters; means including estimates of orientation anisotropy and orientation strength of said scanned image in the neighborhood of the image associated with a transform coefficient at the given neighborhood for modifying each of said transform coefficients to eliminate those portions of the coefficient corresponding to noise by multiplying a coefficient by a modifier, said modifier being a number derived through the comparison of said estimates of orientation anisotropy and orientation strength with orientation anisotropy and orientation strength thresholds derived from related coefficients, said related coefficient being nearby in position to the coefficient being modified or nearby in scale to that of the coefficient being modified or at a different orientation than that of the coefficient being modified in which said thresholds are derived from analysis of multi-scale decomposition of a clean and a degraded image; and, means for reconstructing an enhanced image from said modified coefficients, said reconstructing means including a number of synthesis filters.