Iterative Image Restoration Combining Total Variation Minimization and a Second-Order Functional

A noise removal technique using partial differential equations (PDEs) is proposed here. It combines the Total Variational (TV) filter with a fourth-order PDE filter. The combined technique is able to preserve edges and at the same time avoid the staircase effect in smooth regions. A weighting function is used in an iterative way to combine the solutions of the TV-filter and the fourth-order filter. Numerical experiments confirm that the new method is able to use less restrictive time step than the fourth-order filter. Numerical examples using images with objects consisting of edge, flat and intermediate regions illustrate advantages of the proposed model.