Sparse blind deconvolution for imaging through layered media

The detection of rolling bearing faults is essential to ensure the operational safety of rotating machinery. An effective method for diagnosing rolling bearing faults is the maximum second-order cyclostationarity blind deconvolution (CYCBD) method, which has the ability to extract weak fault periodic pulse features. However, blind deconvolution methods such as CYCBD often fail when composite bearing faults occur in the presence of strong background noise. To overcome this issue, an adaptive blind deconvolution (ABDD) method based on improved CYCBD is proposed. In this method, a finite impulse response (FIR) filter bank is constructed to cover the entire frequency band of the signal, enabling fault frequency segmentation. The improved CYCBD is then used to obtain a filter pattern that locks on the fault frequency. These filter patterns are arranged in descending order based on the correlation kurtosis (CK). The required filtering mode is selected according to the sorting mode, and a spectrum analysis is performed to extract fault features of single and compound faults in the bearing. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate that ABDD effectively extracts bearing composite fault features and outperforms classic feature decomposition and blind deconvolution methods in extracting single and composite fault features.

We use blind deconvolution methods in optical diffusion tomography to reconstruct images of objects imbedded in or located behind turbid media from continuous-wave measurements of the scattered light transmitted through the media. In particular, we use a blind deconvolution imaging algorithm to determine both a deblurred image of the object and the depth of the object inside the turbid medium. Preliminary results indicate that blind deconvolution produces better reconstructions than can be obtained using backpropagation techniques. Moreover, it does so without requiring prior knowledge of the characteristics of the turbid medium or of what the blur-free target should look like: important advances over backpropagation.

Spectrum extraction which is applied to extract one-dimensional (1D) astronomical spectroscopy from twodimensional (2D) multi-fiber spectrum images plays a key role in data processing of 2D optical fiber spectrum. In this paper, we have given a detailed comparison of spectrum extraction methods between the blind deconvolution and the non-blind deconvolution to find out their specialities. The simulated arc spectrum data is used in Comparative experiments. The results show that the blind deconvolution is better than the non-blind deconvolution not only at spectrum extraction result but also remarkably at signal noise ratio (SNR).

Single-image blind deconvolution is one of the most challenging fields in image processing which restores a sharp image from its blurred version. Nowadays blind deconvolution algorithms have made significant progress. However, the restoration of blurred images with little scale edges and periodic textures is still a hard work. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a new normalized sparse regularization blind deconvolution algorithm, which uses a gradient saliency map to prohibit the image small structures on image blurry kernel estimation. Firstly, salient detection is performed to select the important area which conforms with the human vision system and generates a binary mask to screen out useful gradients. Secondly, the normalized sparse regularization blind deconvolution method is applied to obtain accurate blur kernel and recover the sharp image. Finally, the experiment results show that the algorithm can effectively deblur the degraded image on different scenarios.

Blind deconvolution is a challenging problem, but in low-light it is even more difficult. Existing algorithms, both classical and deep-learning based, are not designed for this condition. When the photon shot noise is strong, conventional deconvolution methods fail because (1) the image does not have enough signal-to-noise ratio to perform the blur estimation; (2) While deep neural networks are powerful, many of them do not consider the forward process. When the noise is strong, these networks fail to simultaneously deblur and denoise; (3) While iterative schemes are known to be robust in the classical frameworks, they are seldom considered in deep neural networks because it requires a differentiable non-blind solver. This paper addresses the above challenges by presenting an <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">unsupervised</i> blind deconvolution method. At the core of this method is a reformulation of the general blind deconvolution framework from the conventional image-kernel alternating minimization to a purely kernel-based minimization. This kernel-based minimization leads to a new iterative scheme that backpropagates an unsupervised loss through a pre-trained non-blind solver to update the blur kernel. Experimental results show that the proposed framework achieves superior results than state-of-the-art blind deconvolution algorithms in low-light conditions.

A new blind deconvolution method with additional phase spectral constraints for the blurred image is discussed in this paper. The blurred image is a convolution of an original image and a point-spread function (PSF). The proposed method is based on the following iterative procedures, i.e., a projection onto a frequency space satisfying phase spectrum constraints, a minimization of a cost function and a projection onto an image space satisfying the support and nonnegativity constraints. This method restores the original image and the PSF stably with high accuracy. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by applying it to some blind deconvolution problems of images. The experimental results show that the performance of the proposed method is drastically improved in comparison with the conventional blind deconvolution method.

Detection of an incipient internal defect from a measurement point on the surface of a machine is often made difficult due to the corruption of the source signal by background noise usually through the transmission path. In order to detect or recover the source signal, it is essential to suppress or remove this background noise. With the advancement of digital signal processing techniques, this removal can be achieved using fixed or adaptive filters. The main problem with the application of filtering techniques is that one has to know the characteristics of the noise in advance or may require more than two channels of data if using an adaptive filter. This paper reports on the application of Blind Deconvolution method to recover fault information from the measured (observed) signals of a damaged bearing through the transmission channel and which was also corrupted by noise. The Blind Deconvolution method manages to recover the fault signal by estimating the inverse of the transmission (channel transfer function) path using the eigenvector algorithm (EVA). Modified crest factor (MCF) and Arithmetic Mean (AM) algorithms were used to optimise the equaliser parameters. Computer simulation and experimental studies were used to verify the applicability of the technique.

Total variation minimizing blind deconvolution with shock filter reference

A blind deconvolution problem is newly stated with the following conditions: the point-spread function is band limited, both the object and the point-spread function are nonnegative, and the solution is to be a diffraction-limited object. A blind deconvolution method was developed that can easily be applied to problems in optics because of the conditions used. The performance of the method is investigated with computer simulations.

A blind deconvolution method using the concept of subband filter banks has been proposed. This method makes possible the speedy convergence of solution, due to estimation of supports of the reconstructed images by a deconvolution in the lower layer. We apply the method to blind deconvolution by a simulated annealing algorithm and confirm its usefulness.

Blind deconvolution subject to sparse representation for fluorescence microscopy

We have proposed an all-optical authentic memory with the two-wave encryption method. In the recording process, the image data are encrypted to a white noise by the random phase masks added on the input beam with the image data and the reference beam. Only reading beam with the phase-conjugated distribution of the reference beam can decrypt the encrypted data. If the encrypted data are read out with an incorrect phase distribution, the output data are transformed into a white noise. Moreover, during read out, reconstructions of the encrypted data interfere destructively resulting in zero intensity. Therefore our memory has a merit that we can detect unlawful accesses easily by measuring the output beam intensity. In our encryption method, the random phase mask on the input plane plays important roles in transforming the input image into a white noise and prohibiting to decrypt a white noise to the input image by the blind deconvolution method. Without this mask, when unauthorized users observe the output beam by using CCD in the readout with the plane wave, the completely same intensity distribution as that of Fourier transform of the input image is obtained. Therefore the encrypted image will be decrypted easily by using the blind deconvolution method. However in using this mask, even if unauthorized users observe the output beam using the same method, the encrypted image cannot be decrypted because the observed intensity distribution is dispersed at random by this mask. Thus it can be said the robustness is increased by this mask. In this report, we compare two correlation coefficients, which represents the degree of a white noise of the output image, between the output image and the input image in using this mask or not. We show that the robustness of this encryption method is increased as the correlation coefficient is improved from 0.3 to 0.1 by using this mask.

We propose a new method of blind deconvolution (BD) suitable for the recovery of truncated blurred images. In practical cases we often encounter truncated images, but they are difficult to treat properly with conventional BD algorithms, since nontruncated blurred images are assumed. The proposed method is based on simulated annealing (SA), to which we introduce an adaptive masking process. After a truncated segment is cut out from the blurred image, the sharp edges surrounding the segment are removed by multiplying the initial window, whose shape is determined with the initial estimate of the point spread function (PSF). A more appropriate estimate for the PSF is obtained from the masked segment based on the SA algorithm, and according to the new estimate of the PSF, the shape of the window is varied. These procedures are iterated until we finally obtain the best possible estimate of the PSF. In the last step, the entire blurred image is deconvolved with the final estimate of the PSF to obtain the recovered image. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed by computer simulation.

An acoustic space is uniquely characterized by its reverberant behavior. Due to the complexity of the multiple reflections and diffraction of sound in an enclosure, currently available system identification algorithms cannot effectively estimate the impulse response of a concert hall simply from musical recordings in that space. This paper reports the use of blind image deconvolution methods to construct echo patterns from quadratic time-frequency representations of reverberant recordings of music. First, a quadratic time-frequency analysis is performed to decompose the musical signal into its constituent harmonic components. Quadratic time-frequency analysis methods are known to give enhanced resolution in the time-frequency plane in comparison to conventional Fourier analysis. Reverberant features then appear as blur in the time-frequency plane, which can be estimated by employing the methods of blind deconvolution of this “image” of the sound. The proposed algorithm retrieves both the blur pattern, which corresponds to the reverberation echogram, and the direct acoustic signal. By choosing the time-frequency frame scale and smoothing window, a multi-resolution analysis of the underlying acoustic impulse response is obtained. Various quadratic time-frequency analysis methods are evaluated and their relative performance is reported. The proposed methods are also compared to existing dereverberation algorithms.

A weighted total variation algorithm was proposed for solving some blind deconvolution problems,and then we got the existence of energy functional minimum and educed corresponding thermal flow.In computer simulations,the algorithm performs well even when we have no more accurate prior knowledge about point spread function and the original true image,besides some other constrains.Experiments show that the proposed algorithm is more effective and performs better than the total variation blind deconvolution method proposed.