A novel image fusion algorithm based on 2D scale-mixing complex wavelet transform and Bayesian MAP estimation for multimodal medical images

In this paper,we propose a new image fusion algorithm based on two-dimensional Scale-Mixing Complex Wavelet Transform(2D-SMCWT).The fusion of the detail 2D-SMCWT cofficients is performed via a Bayesian Maximum a Posteriori(MAP)approach by considering a trivariate statistical model for the local neighboring of 2D-SMCWT coefficients.For the approx imation coefficients,a new fusion rule based on the Principal Component Analysis(PCA)is applied.We conduct several experiments using three different groups of multimodal medical images to evaluate the performance of the proposed method.The obt ained results prove the superiority of the proposed method over the state of the art fusion methods in terms of visual quality and several commonly used metrics.Robustness of the proposed method is further tested against different types of noise.The plots of fusion met rics establish the accuracy of the proposed fusion method.

Relay selection based on MAP estimation for cooperative communication with outdated channel state information

In this paper, we consider an amplify-and-forward （AF） cooperative communication system when the channel state information （CSI） used in relay selection differs from that during data transmission, i.e., the CSI used in relay selection is outdated. The selected relay may not be actually the best for data transmission and the outage performance of the cooperative system will deteriorate. To improve its performance, we propose a relay selection strategy based on maximum a posteriori （MAP） estimation, where relay is selected based on predicted signal-to-noise ratio （SNR）. To reduce the computation complexity, we approximate the a posteriori probability density of SNR and obtain a closed-form predicted SNR, and a relay selection strategy based on the approximate MAP estimation （RS-AMAP） is proposed. The simulation results show that this approximation leads to trivial performance loss from the perspective of outage probability. Compared with relay selection strategies given in the literature, the outage probability is reduced largely through RS-AMAP for medium-to-large transmitting powers and medium-to-high channel correlation coefficients.

Guided Intra-Patch Smoothing Graph Filtering for Single-Image Denoising

Graph filtering is an important part of graph signal processing and a useful tool for image denoising.Existing graph filtering methods,such as adaptive weighted graph filtering(AWGF),focus on coefficient shrinkage strategies in a graph-frequency domain.However,they seldom consider the image attributes in their graph-filtering procedure.Consequently,the denoising performance of graph filtering is barely comparable with that of other state-of-the-art denoising methods.To fully exploit the image attributes,we propose a guided intra-patch smoothing AWGF(AWGF-GPS)method for single-image denoising.Unlike AWGF,which employs graph topology on patches,AWGF-GPS learns the topology of superpixels by introducing the pixel smoothing attribute of a patch.This operation forces the restored pixels to smoothly evolve in local areas,where both intra-and inter-patch relationships of the image are utilized during patch restoration.Meanwhile,a guided-patch regularizer is incorporated into AWGF-GPS.The guided patch is obtained in advance using a maximum-a-posteriori probability estimator.Because the guided patch is considered as a sketch of a denoised patch,AWGF-GPS can effectively supervise patch restoration during graph filtering to increase the reliability of the denoised patch.Experiments demonstrate that the AWGF-GPS method suitably rebuilds denoising images.It outperforms most state-of-the-art single-image denoising methods and is competitive with certain deep-learning methods.In particular,it has the advantage of managing images with significant noise.

Density Map Guided Region Localization for End-to-End Small Object Detection

With the advancement of society and science and technology, the demand for detecting small objects in practical scenarios becomes stronger. Such objects are only represented by relatively small coverage of pixels, and the features are degraded severely after being extracted by a deep convolutional neural network, which is detrimental to the detection performance for small objects. Therefore, an intuitive solution is to increase the resolution of small objects by cropping the original image. In this paper, we propose a simple but effective object density map guided region localization module (DMGRL) to locate and crop the regions of interest where small objects may exist. Firstly, the density map of the objects is estimated by object density map estimation network, and then the coordinates of the small object regions are calculated;Secondly, the continuous differentiable affine transformation is utilized to crop these regions so that the detector with DMGRL can be trained end-to-end instead of two-stage training. Finally, the all prediction results of input image and cropped region images are merged together to output the final detection results by non maximum suppression (NMS). Extensive experiments demonstrate the superior performance of the detector incorporated DMGRL.

Relative dynamics estimation of non-cooperative spacecraft with unknown orbit elements and inertial tensor

The state estimation for relative motion with respect to non-cooperative spacecraft in ren- dezvous and docking （RVD） is a challenging problem. In this paper, a completely non-cooperative case is considered, which means that both orbit elements and inertial tensor of target spacecraft are unknown. By formulating the equations of relative translational dynamics in the orbital plane of chaser spacecraft, the issue of unknown orbit elements is solved. And for the problem for unknown inertial tensor, we propose a novel robust estimator named interaction cubature Kalman filter （InCKF） to handle it. The novel filter consists of multiple concurrent CKFs interlacing with a max- imum a posteriori （MAP） estimator. The initial estimations provided by the multiple CKFs are used in a Bayesian framework to form description of posteriori probability about inertial tensor and the MAP estimator is applied to giving the optimal estimation. By exploiting special property of spherical-radial （SR） rule, a novel method with respect to approximating the likelihood probability of inertial tensor is presented. In addition, the issue about vision sensor＇s location inconformity with center mass of chaser spacecraft is also considered. The performance of this filter is demonstrated by the estimation problem of RVD at the final phase. And the simulation results show that the perfor- mance of InCKF is better than that of extended Kalman filter （EKF） and the estimation accuracy of oose and attitude is relatively high even in the comoletely non-coooerative case.

Bayesian uncertainty analysis of SA turbulence model for supersonic jet interaction simulations

The Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes(RANS) models are still the workhorse in current engineering applications due to its high efficiency and robustness. However, the closure coefficients of RANS turbulence models are determined by model builders according to some simple fundamental flows, and the suggested values may not be applicable to complex flows, especially supersonic jet interaction flow. In this work, the Bayesian method is employed to recalibrate the closure coefficients of Spalart-Allmaras(SA) turbulence model to improve its performance in supersonic jet interaction problem and quantify the uncertainty of wall pressure and separation length. The embedded model error approach is applied to the Bayesian uncertainty analysis. Firstly, the total Sobol index is calculated by non-intrusive polynomial chaos method to represent the sensitivity of wall pressure and separation length to model parameters. Then, the pressure data and the separation length are respectively served as calibration data to get the posterior uncertainty of model parameters and Quantities of Interests(Qo Is). The results show that the relative error of the wall pressure predicted by the SA turbulence model can be reduced from 14.99% to 2.95% through effective Bayesian parameter estimation. Besides, the calibration effects of four likelihood functions are systematically evaluated. The posterior uncertainties of wall pressure and separation length estimated by different likelihood functions are significantly discrepant, and the Maximum a Posteriori(MAP) values of parameters inferred by all functions show better performance than the nominal values. Finally, the closure coefficients are also estimated at different jet total pressures. The similar posterior distributions of model parameters are obtained in different cases, and the MAP values of parameters calibrated in one case are also applicable to other cases.

Bayesian edge detector for SAR imagery using discontinuity-adaptive Markov random feld modeling

Synthetic aperture radar（SAR）image is severely affected by multiplicative speckle noise,which greatly complicates the edge detection.In this paper,by incorporating the discontinuityadaptive Markov random feld（DAMRF）and maximum a posteriori（MAP）estimation criterion into edge detection,a Bayesian edge detector for SAR imagery is accordingly developed.In the proposed detector,the DAMRF is used as the a priori distribution of the local mean reflectivity,and a maximum a posteriori estimation of it is thus obtained by maximizing the posteriori energy using gradient-descent method.Four normalized ratios constructed in different directions are computed,based on which two edge strength maps（ESMs）are formed.The fnal edge detection result is achieved by fusing the results of two thresholded ESMs.The experimental results with synthetic and real SAR images show that the proposed detector could effciently detect edges in SAR images,and achieve better performance than two popular detectors in terms of Pratt＇s fgure of merit and visual evaluation in most cases.

Image Denoising via Improved Simultaneous Sparse Coding with Laplacian Scale Mixture

Image denoising is a well-studied problem closely related to sparse coding. Noticing that the Laplacian distribution has a strong sparseness, we use Laplacian scale mixture to model sparse coefficients. With the observation that prior information of an image is relevant to the estimation of sparse coefficients, we introduce the prior information into maximum a posteriori（MAP） estimation of sparse coefficients by an appropriate estimate of the probability density function. Extending to structured sparsity, a nonlocal image denoising model： Improved Simultaneous Sparse Coding with Laplacian Scale Mixture（ISSC-LSM） is proposed. The centering preprocessing, which admits biased-mean of sparse coefficients and saves expensive computation, is done firstly. By alternating minimization and learning an orthogonal PCA dictionary, an efficient algorithm with closed-form solutions is proposed. When applied to noise removal, our proposed ISSC-LSM can capture structured image features, and the adoption of image prior information leads to highly competitive denoising performance. Experimental results show that the proposed method often provides higher subjective and objective qualities than other competing approaches. Our method is most suitable for processing images with abundant self-repeating patterns by effectively suppressing undesirable artifacts while maintaining the textures and edges.