International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 2, Issue 9, September 2012)

Image enhancement using Moving window-based double Haar

wavelet transform
G.venkateswarlu1 B. Jayanth nadh2 B.Hymavathi3
1

Pursuing M.Tech (DECS), 2Assistant Professor Dept. of ECE ,SBIT, Khammam, India
3
Matlab developer, nexxoft Infotel Ltd, Hyderabad, India
But wavelet transform
gives better result when
compared to traditional methods like median filtering.In
this paper we focused on enhancement using Haar wavelet
as it is very simple wavelet

Abstract -In the image processing scenario the image

enhancement takes high importance .Among so many image
enhancement techniques the image enhancement is one of the
main way. Visual information transmitted in the form of
digital images is becoming a major method of communication
in the modern age, but the image obtained after transmission
is often corrupted with noise. The received image needs
processing before it can be used in applications. Image
enhancement involves the manipulation of the image data to
produce a visually high quality image. Different noise models
including additive and multiplicative types are used. They
include Gaussian noise, Salt and Pepper noise, Speckle noise
and Brownian noise. But wavelet transform considered to be
better when compared with traditional techniques like median
filtering etc.The proposed Double Haar Wavelet transform
can make the image enhancement more effectively because of
its improved low pass filter. Here, we propose an improved
way in the choice of moving windows which can realize
protecting the details and smoothing the noise. The estimate
error of the wavelet coefficient for a pixel does not influence
the estimates of the other pixels in the image. This technique
can be used in the weather forecasting applications, for
cleaning satellite images, in photo studios and in internet
applications, etc, where the images are affected by Gaussian
noise.

II.

Keywords - DWT,Haar,Gaussian noise, Speckle noise,

moving window

I.

W AVELET T HEORY

Fourier transform is extremely useful for analyzing the

signal because frequency content is very important for
understanding the nature of signal and the noise that
contains it. The only drawback is loss of time information.
So to avoid this problem we go for Short Time Fourier
Transfrom.Here both time and frequency information is
present because we are using windowing technique to get
the localized point information but the only drawback is the
same window will be applied to all frequencies. To
overcome this we go for Wavelet Transform. It allows the
different window sizes for different frequencies. So we get
the small duration analysis. It gives time-frequency
analysis of a given signal. The major advantage of wavelets
is the ability to perform local analysis. The wavelet can be
manipulated in two ways Translation (time shift), scaling
(level shift).
Wavelet analysis is capable of revealing aspects of data
that other signal analysis techniques such as Fourier
analysis miss aspects like trends, breakdown points,
discontinuities in higher derivatives, and self-similarity. It
can compress or de-noise a signal without appreciable
degradation.

INTRODUCTION

The Images acquired through modern sensors may be

contaminated by a variety of noise sources. We will assume
that we are dealing with images formed from light using
modern electro-optics. In particular we will assume the use
of modern, charge-coupled device (CCD) cameras[1][3]
The various noise models like additive noise and
multiplicative noise can be possible. They include Gaussian
noise, Salt and Pepper noise, Speckle noise and Brownian
noise Image addition also finds applications in mage
morphing. By image multiplication, we mean the
brightness of the image is varied.
There are number of different ways to remove or reduce
noise in an image. Different image enhancement methods
are better for different kinds of noise.

III.

W AVELET T RANSFORM B ASED ENHANCEMENT

The fig(1) shows the general wavelet de-nosing

procedure.
Add
gauss
ian
noise

70

thres
holdi

ng

enha
ncem
ent

Imae
ge
recon
struct
ion

International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 2, Issue 9, September 2012)
Apply wavelet transform to the noisy signal to produce
the noisy wavelet coefficients to the level Select
appropriate threshold limit at each level and threshold
method (hardor soft thresholding) to best remove the
noises.
Inverse wavelet transform of the thresholded wavelet
coefficients to obtain a de-noised signal.
3.1 Thresholding
Two rules are generally used for thresholding the
wavelet coefficients i.e soft/hard thresholding[2] Hard
thresholding will kill all the wavelet coefficients whose
magnitudes are less than the threshold to zero while
keeping the remaining coefficients unchanged. soft
thresholding kills the smaller wavelet coefficients as well.
However, all the coefficients whose magnitudes are greater
than the threshold will be reduced by the amount of the
threshold. It has shown that hard thresholding provides an
improved signal to noise ratio. Below Equations represents
hard and soft thresholding. The thresholding procedure
then sets the small wavelet coefficients representing w (n)
to zero, while the large coefficients due to x (n) are only
slightly affected. Thus, provided the threshold is chosen
appropriately, the signal reconstructed from the
manipulated wavelet coefficients will contain much less
noise than y (n) does. In practice, the problem is to choose
, because the amount of noise is usually not known a
priori. If is too small, the noise will not be efficiently
removed. If it is too large, the signal will be distorted.

This thresholding scheme is based on an approximation

result from Birge and Massart and is well suited for signal
compression. This strategy keeps all of the approximation
coefficients at the level of decomposition J. The number of
detail coefficients to be kept at level I starting from 1 to J is
given by the formula: is a de-noising parameter and its
value is typically 1.5.

Nj

The value of M denotes the how scarcely distributed

the wavelet coefficients are in the transform vector.
If L denotes the length of the coarsest approximation
coefficients then M takes on the values in Table depending
on the signal being analyzed.

y(n) ,y(n) <- (hard)

0

,|y(n)|

y(n)- ,y(n)

Scarce

High

Medium

1.5*L

Low

2*L

3.2 Level of Decomposition

The maximum level to apply the wavelet transform
depends on how many data points contain in a data set,
since there is a down-sampling by 2 operations from one
level to the next one. One factor that affects the number of
level we can reach to achieve the satisfactory noise removal
results is the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in the original
signal.
3.3 Performance Measures
The following parameters are compared:

y(n) ,y(n) >

(n)=

M
( J 2 i )

>

SNR=10log10(x2 / e2 )
(n)=

y(n)+ ,y(n)
0

,|y(n)|

x2 is the mean square of image signal.e2 is the mean

<- (soft)

square difference between original and reconstructed

signal.

PSNR=10log10 ((N.X2)/(X-r) 2)
N is the length of the reconstructed signal, X is the
maximum absolute square valve of the signal x and
absolute of square(x-r) is the energy of the difference
between the original and reconstructed signals.

To calculate thresholds i,e,for the truncation of smallvalued transform coefficients, global thresholding
technique can be used, Global thresholds are calculated by
setting the % of coefficients to be truncated. Level
dependent thresholds are calculated using the BirgeMassart strategy.

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 2, Issue 9, September 2012)
IV.

The design of the Haar wavelet-based M-channel filter

bank (HMF) is finished. When M>2, the HMF is nonorthogonal.
The HMF with M=3 is

DOUBLE H AAR W AVELET T RANSFORM

x (n) is split by a low-pass filter II and high pass filters

Hk(z); k=1,..M-1 into the reference signal x0(n),
k=1,...M each of which is declined by a factor of M.
For reconstruction, interpolation by a factor of M is
performed, followed reconstruction filters G k (z), k=0,
1M-1

1 1 0
1

H 0 1 1
3

1 1 1

2 1 1

1 1 1
1 2 1

called the DHWT. According to the definition of DHWT

we have the reconstructed .
X (n-1) =X0(n)-X1(n) +X2(n)
V.

1 In the horizontal direction, the original image x0(m,n) is

filtered by the filters H0(z), H1(z) and H2(z) respectively.
Three images x00 (m, n), x01 (m, n) and x02 (m, n) are
produced.
2 In the vertical direction, the three images x00(m,n) ,
x01(m,n) and x02(m,n) are filtered by the filters H0(z),
H1(z) and H2(z) respectively. This gives nine images x0j
(m, n), 0 < j < 8
x0j(m,n) ,0 <j < 8 with an interval of three, we obtain
nine sub images x0j (m,n) ,0 <j <8.
3 Down-sampling the images
4 Steps 1)3) can be repeated on the sub image so as to get
the other sub images in the next scale.
Thus, by reconstruction, the estimates of the nine pixels
are equal to the average of their grays, which just forms a
mosaic. Then, the center of the window is shifted by one
pixel to the neighbor pixel[6]
In the worst case, the estimates of the pixels and are the
average of the grays of the nine pixels in their respective
windows, this just forms a 3 X 3 moving window-based
mean filtering. Compared to the traditional de-noising in
wavelet transform domain, the MWDHWT uses different
wavelet coefficients for different pixels to obtain the
estimates. Thus, the estimate error of the wavelet
coefficients for a pixel does not influence the estimates of
the other pixels in the image.

Structure of discrete M-channel filter bank.

H K(z) =1/M (z K +1 z K),

K=1,.,M-1

H0(z)=1/M(1+z-1++z M+1)
To
obtain
the
reconstruction
filters
G k(z),
k=0,1,..M, we need to express the M-channel analysis
filter as matrix notation. Let
1

H1 ( z )
1

H ( z)
2
z

H.
.
.

M 1
H
(
z
)

1 0

M .

1.....

0
.

The inverse matrix of H can be written as

M 2....1
M 1

1
1

H
.

1 2 M 2

1
.

G1 ( z )
M 2....1

M 1
G2 ( z ) 1
.

.
.

G ( z ) 1 2 M 1
0

MOVING W INDOW B ASED DHWT FOR IMAGE DE NOISING

1 z M 1

1 z M 2

. .

1 1

Then the reconstruction filters, Gk (z), k=0, 1 M;

The span of the low-pass filter H0 (z) is just M. After
decimating with a factor of M, the noise in the decimated
reference signal will preserve its independent property.
This property is very useful for some de-noising operators
that ask the noise to be white in the different scales of
wavelet transform domain.

VI.

RESULTS

DHWT is obtained by down sampling by "3" i.e., M=3

which say us that the no: of stages in decomposition are 3.

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 2, Issue 9, September 2012)

threshold

SNR(dB)

Haar

dhwt

Mwdhwt

0.3548

0.3464

0.3464

17.8980 15.1673

20.8128
Fig 2(e) domain for DHWT

PSNR(dB) 38.1835 39.1381

51.2833

In Haar wavelet original image can be sub divided into 4

sub images. DHWT sub divides the original image into 9
sub images In Moving window based DHWT the size of
the window can be fixed as per our wish, But this can in the
form 3n X 3n.The main advantage in MWDHWT is the
PSNR &SNR will be so high when compared with HWT
and DHWT.because the wavelet can be applied more than
once according to algorithm.
The image of cameraman with 256X256 pixels, which is
considered as reference to this project is shown in Fig.2(a).
The image which is corrupted with Gaussian noise of
variance of 0.005 and zero mean is shown in Fig2(b). Its
PSNR value is 23.5127 dB. From this, it gives that Moving
Window-Based Double Haar Wavelet technique has
produce higher SNR and PSNR values compared to Haar
wavelet and Double Haar wavelet transform.

Fig.2(a) Original Image

Fig.2(f) Reconstructed image

Fig.2(g) Reconstructed image with MWHWT.

VII.

CONCLUSIONS

Experimental results indicate that the new method of

noise reduction significantly outperforms a standard
procedure which is used to restore contaminated images
with Gaussian noise. The new technique is fast and very
easy to implement. As can be seen, the new class of
wavelets eliminates efficiently Gaussian noise, while
preserving important image structures like edges, corners,
lines and fine texture. The application of moving windowbased double Haar wavelet transform for image
enhancement can be well studied for weather forecasting
purposes, medical related areas. In weather forecasting the
Gaussian noise reduction wavelet is used to remove the
Gaussian noise on satellite images. In medical applications
this wavelet is used to remove the noise on the X-rays.
REFERENCES

Fig.2(b) Noisy input

[1 ] Rafael C. Gonzalez and

Richard E. Woods,
Digital Image
Processing, Prentice Hall Publications, Second edition, 1992
[2 ] Insight into wavelets from theory to
practice B.KP.Soman,
nd

Fig.2(c)Haar Wavelet

K.I.Ramachandran, 2 edition.
[3 ] Rafael C. Gonzalez and Richard E.
Woods, Digital Image
Processing Using MATLAB, Prentice Hall Publications, Second
Edition, 1992
[4 ] M.Hansen and B.Yu, Wavelet thresholding via MDL for natural
imagesIEEE Trans Inf.Theory,Vol 46,no. 8 ,pp.1778 -1788, Aug
2000

Fig.2(d)Haar Wavelet output

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 2, Issue 9, September 2012)
[5 ] S.G.Chang, B.YU and M.Veterli, Adaptive wavelet thresholding
for image enhancement and compression, IEEE Trans .Image
Process,Vol 9, no. 9,pp. 1532-1546,Sept 2000
[6 ] Xin Wang Moving Window-Based Double Haar Wavelet
Transform For Image Processing,IEEE Trans .Image Process Vo15,
no. 9, pp. 2771-2779, Sept.2006 .

AUTHORS
G.Venkateswarlu, Pursuing M.Tech DECS branch in
SBIT, khammam. B.Tech ECE at SBIT, Khammam.
His research interests include image processing
applications .
B.Jayanthnadh, received his B.Tech degree in
electronics and communication engineering from
JNTUH,a.p,india and M.Tech in embedded systems
from JNTUH .He presently working as an assistant
professor in Swarna Bharathi Institute of science and
Technology(SBIT) khammam.ap,india. His research
interests include image processing applications and
communication systems, embedded systems. He had
two years of experience in SED,ECIL Hyderabad.
B.Hymavathi, Matlab developer, Nexxoft Infotel ltd,
Hyderabad.Born in vempadu, Krishna(dist),B.tech at
GEC ,Gudlavalleru and M.tech(DECS) in GMRIT,Rajam

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