Super-Resolution Based on Curvelet Transform and Sparse Representation

Super-resolution techniques are used to reconstruct an image with a high resolution from one or more low-resolution image(s).In this paper,we proposed a single image super-resolution algorithm.It uses the nonlocal mean filter as a prior step to produce a denoised image.The proposed algorithm is based on curvelet transform.It converts the denoised image into low and high frequencies(sub-bands).Then we applied a multi-dimensional interpolation called Lancozos interpolation over both sub-bands.In parallel,we applied sparse representation with over complete dictionary for the denoised image.The proposed algorithm then combines the dictionary learning in the sparse representation and the interpolated sub-bands using inverse curvelet transform to have an image with a higher resolution.The experimental results of the proposed super-resolution algorithm show superior performance and obviously better-recovering images with enhanced edges.The comparison study shows that the proposed super-resolution algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art.The mean absolute error is 0.021±0.008 and the structural similarity index measure is 0.89±0.08.