LIC-based regularization of multi-valued images

In this paper, a general multi-valued image regularization method based on LIC´s (line integral convolutions [B. Cabral, 1993]} is proposed. From the investigation of recent approaches based on multi-valued diffusion PDE´s, we show how a regularization process is naturally decomposed, first as the estimation of its underlying smoothing geometry, and then, as the application of a locally and spatially oriented smoothing. Performing this last part using LIC´s significatively improves the overall regularization process both in visual quality and processing time. We illustrate three different applications of our general regularization framework: color image denoising, inpainting and magnification.