Interconversion Between Truncated Cartesian and Polar Expansions of Images

In this paper, we propose an algorithm for lossless conversion of data between Cartesian and polar coordinates, when the data is sampled from a 2-D real-valued function (a mapping: ) expressed as a particular kind of truncated expansion. We use Laguerre functions and the Fourier basis for the polar coordinate expression. Hermite functions are used for the Cartesian coordinate expression. A finite number of coefficients for the truncated expansion specifies the function in each coordinate system. We derive the relationship between the coefficients for the two coordinate systems. Based on this relationship, we propose an algorithm for lossless conversion between the two coordinate systems. Resampling can be used to evaluate a truncated expansion on the complementary coordinate system without computing a new set of coefficients. The resampled data is used to compute the new set of coefficients to avoid the numerical instability associated with direct conversion of the coefficients. In order to apply our algorithm to discrete image data, we propose a method to optimally fit a truncated expression to a given image. We also quantify the error that this filtering process can produce. Finally the algorithm is applied to solve the polar-Cartesian interpolation problem.