A PDE approach to image smoothing and magnification using the Mumford-Shah functional

We first address the problem of simultaneous image segmentation and smoothing by approaching the Mumford-Shah (1989) paradigm from a curve evolution perspective. In particular we let a set of deformable contours define the boundaries between regions in an image where we model the data via piecewise smooth functions and employ a gradient flow to evolve these contours. Next, we generalize the data fidelity term of the original Mumford-Shah functional to incorporate a spatially varying penalty. This more general model leads us to a novel partial differential equation (PDE) based approach for simultaneous image magnification, segmentation, and smoothing.