Image recovery from noisy transmission using soft bits and Markov random field models

Abstract

A new method for robust image recovery from noisy transmis- sion based on soft bits and Markov random field modeling is proposed. The method aims to exploit the residual redundancy present in the sym- bols produced by a source encoder together with knowledge about the statistical properties of natural images. The soft-bit information required for reconstruction can be extracted either directly at the output of a noisy communication channel or at the output of a soft channel decoder (if channel codes are used). In the latter case, the proposed algorithm can also be used in conjunction with iterative channel decoding, resulting in joint source-channel turbo decoding. Examples are presented for the case where no channel codes are employed. The results obtained indi- cate that the proposed method yields very good performance even under extremely noisy conditions. © 2003 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engi- neers. (DOI: 10.1117/1.1603757)