Motion artifact is a serious problem to MRI diagnosis and analysis due to periodic motion or patient motion during the image acquisition. A metric-based method, EXTRACT, used the information by using extrapolation of the k-space data and a metric based on correlation between the extrapolated k-space data and the motion corrupted k-space data. In this paper, we propose to use the finite support technique in conjunction with the generalized series in the spectral extrapolation to determine the motion that causes phase shift in the corrupted k-space data, thus improving the performance of MRI motion correction. Some experimental results are given to demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm.

In two-dimensional Fourier transform magnetic resonance imaging (2DFT-MRI), patient/object motion during the image acquisition results in ghosting and blurring. These motion artifacts are commonly considered as a major limitation in the MRI community. To correct these artifacts without resorting to additional navigator echoes, most existing methods perform image quality measure to estimate motion; but they may easily fail when the motion is large. Viewed as a blind image restoration problem where the motion point spread function (PSF) is unknown, state-of-the-art restoration algorithms can not be easily applied because they cannot handle a complex PSF kernel that has the same size as the image. To overcome these challenges, we propose a novel approach that exploits the image structure to segment the kernel into several fragments. Based on this kernel representation, determining a kernel fragment can be formulated as a binary optimization problem, where each binary variable represents whether a segment in MR signals is corrupted by a certain motion or not. We establish a graphical model for these variables and estimate the kernel by minimizing an energy functional associated with the model. Experimental results show that the proposed method can provide satisfactory compensation of motion artifacts even when large motions are involved in the MR images.

Multi-exposure X-ray imaging can see through objects and separate different material into transparent layers. However, layer motion makes the separation task under-determined. Instead of aligning the non-rigid motion, we address the layer separation problem in gradient domain and propose an energy optimization framework to regularize it by explicitly enforcing independence constraint. It is shown that gradient domain allows more accurate and robust independence analysis between non-stationary signal using mutual information (MI) and hence achieves better separation. Furthermore, gradient fields contain sufficient information for full reconstruction of separated layers by solving the Poisson Equation. For efficient regularization of the gradient separation, energy terms based on the Taylor expansion of MI is further derived. Evaluation on both synthesized and real datasets proves the effectiveness of our algorithm and its robustness to complex tissue motion.

Characterization of halftone texture is important for quantitative assessment of halftone quality. In this paper, we develop a new framework based on directional local sequency analysis and a filter bank structure. We decompose a halftone image into subband images, from which we can easily reconstruct the original halftone. Based on these subband images, we define the directional sequency spectrum which is analogous to the two-dimensional Fourier spectrum, and formulate several texture measures. Two test image sets are used to justify these measures.

Characterization of halftone textures is important for quantitative assessment of halftone quality. We develop a new framework based on directional local sequency analysis and a filter bank structure. We decompose a halftone image into subband images from which we can easily reconstruct the original halftone. Based on these subband images, we define the directional sequency spectrum which is analogous to the 2D Fourier spectrum, and formulate several texture measures. Three test images are used to justify these measures.

Due to its high image quality and moderate computational complexity, error diffusion is a popular halftoning algorithm for use with inkjet printers. However, error diffusion is an inherently serial algorithm that requires buffering a full row of accumulated diffused error (ADE) samples. For the best performance when the algorithm is implemented in hardware, the ADE data should be stored on the chip on which the error diffusion algorithm is implemented. However, this may result in an unacceptable hardware cost. In this paper, we examine the use of quantization of the ADE to reduce the amount of data that must be stored. We consider both uniform and nonuniform quantizers. For the nonuniform quantizers, we build on the concept of tone-dependency in error diffusion, by proposing several novel feature-dependent quantizers that yield improved image quality at a given bit rate, compared to memoryless quantizers. The optimal design of these quantizers is coupled with the design of the tone-dependent parameters associated with error diffusion. This is done via a combination of the classical Lloyd-Max algorithm and the training framework for tone-dependent error diffusion. Our results show that 4-bit uniform quantization of the ADE yields the same halftone quality as error diffusion without quantization of the ADE. At rates that vary from 2 to 3 bits per pixel, depending on the selectivity of the feature on which the quantizer depends, the feature-dependent quantizers achieve essentially the same quality as 4-bit uniform quantization.

Because of its good image quality and moderate computational requirements, error diffusion has become a popular halftoning solution for desktop printers, especially inkjet printers. By making the weights and thresholds tone-dependent and using a predesigned halftone bitmap for tone-dependent threshold modulation, it is possible to achieve image quality very close to that obtained with far more computationally complex iterative methods. However, the ability to implement error diffusion in very low cost or large format products is hampered by the requirement to store the tone-dependent parameters and halftone bitmap, and also the need to store error information for an entire row of the image at any given point during the halftoning process. For the first problem, we replace the halftone bitmap by deterministic bit flipping, which has been previously applied to halftoning, and we linearly interpolate the tone-dependent weights and thresholds from a small set of knot points. We call this implementation a reduced lookup table. For the second problem, we introduce a new serial block-based approach to error diffusion. This approach depends on a novel intrablock scan path and the use of different parameter sets at different points along that path. We show that serial block-based error diffusion reduces off-chip memory access by a factor equal to the block height. With both these solutions, satisfactory image quality can only be obtained with new cost functions that we have developed for the training process. With these new cost functions and moderate block size, we can obtain image quality that is very close to that of the original tone-dependent error diffusion algorithm.