IMAGE PRUNING USING BELIEF PROPAGATION

ABSTRACT:
An interactive image completion method is proposed based on Belief Propagation
(BP). Blocked area or area with loss of information in a target image is completed
with BP combined with texture synthesis in an interactive way. The target image is
decomposed by BP into levels of Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMF) images, while
the user is allowed to indicate the structural image edge to recover in the unknown
image regions. For each level of IMF image, first the target image patches along
user-specified curves in the unknown region are completed. Then the remaining
target image patches are prioritized to complete according to image gradient
feature. The target image patches are completed based on the combination
frequency feature values from BP and the texture synthesis. Finally, levels of
completed IMF images are compounded into the result image. Experiments prove
that the proposed algorithm is not only able to recover the damaged structural and
texture information of large scale, but also completely blocked image structures.
 EXISTING SYSTEM
 Statistical-based methods,
 PDE-based methods,
 Exemplar-based methods.

Statistical - based methods

These methods are mainly used for the case of texture synthesis. Typically, what these methods
do is that, given an input texture, they try to describe it by extracting some statistics through the use of
compact parametric statistical models.

Then, in order to synthesize a new texture, these methods typically start with an output image
containing pure noise, and keep perturbing that image until its statistics match the estimated statistics of
the input texture.

Besides the synthesis of still images, parametric statistical models have been also proposed for
the case of image sequences.

However, the main drawback of all methods that are based on parametric statistical models is
that, as already mentioned, they are applicable only to the problem of texture synthesis, and not to the
general problem of image completion.

PDE - based methods

These methods, on the other hand, try to fill the missing region of an image through a diffusion
process, by smoothly propagating information from the boundary towards the interior of the missing
region.

According to these techniques, the diffusion process is simulated by solving a partial differential
equation (PDE), which is typically non-linear and of high order.
 The main disadvantage of almost all PDE based methods is that they are mostly suitable for
image inpainting situations. This term usually refer to the case where the missing part of the image
consists of thin, elongated regions.

Furthermore, PDE-based methods implicitly assume that the content of the missing region is
smooth and non-textured.

For this reason, when these methods are applied to images where the missing regions are large
and textured, they usually oversmooth the image and introduce blurring artifacts.

Exemplar-based methods

These methods try to fill the unknown region simply by copying content from the observed part
of the image. All exemplar-based techniques for texture synthesis that have appeared until now, were
either pixel-based , or patch-based, meaning that the final texture was synthesized one pixel, or one patch
at a time by simply copying pixels or patches from the observed image respectively.

Exemplar based method

Recent exemplar-based methods also place emphasis on the order by which the image synthesis
proceeds, usually using a confidence map for this purpose. There are two main handicaps of related
existing techniques.
 First, the confidence map is computed based on heuristics and ad hoc principles that may not
apply in the general case and second, once an observed patch has been assigned to a missing block of
pixels, that block cannot change its assigned patch thereafter.

This last fact reveals the greediness of these techniques, which may lead to visual inconsistencies.

PROPOSED SYSTEM

We presenting an operator called seam carving for content-aware resizing of images computed as
the optimal paths on a single image and removing from an image.

This operator can be used for image manipulations including: image retargeting and object
removal. The operator can be easily integrated with various saliency measures, as well as user input, to
guide the resizing process.

In addition, we define a data structure for multi-size images that support continuous resizing
ability in real time we present a representation of multi-size images that encodes, for an image of size
(m×n), an entire range of retargeting sizes from a×b to m×n and allows the user to retarget an image
continuously in real time.

Seam carving

Seam carving is an image resizing algorithm developed by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir. This
algorithm alters the dimensions of an image not by scaling or cropping, but rather by intelligently
removing pixels from (or adding pixels to) the image that carry little importance.

The importance of a pixel is generally measured by its contrast when compared with its neighbor
pixels, but other measures may be used. Additionally, it's possible to define (or autodetect) areas of high
importance (faces, buildings, etc.) in which pixels may not be deleted, and conversely, areas of zero
importance which should be removed first.
 From this information, the algorithm detects seams (continuous lines of pixels joining opposite
edges of the image) which have the lowest importance, and deletes those.

This shrinks the image by one horizontal or vertical line, depending on which direction the seam
ran. Seam carving can also be run in reverse by adding interpolated pixels along the lowest energy seam.

With this technique, it's now possible to reduce or enlarge pictures by a wide range, while still
retaining details. In normal image scaling, it's often not possible to scale about factor greater than 2 or less
than 0.5, without losing much of the images quality.

ADVANTAGES OF PROPOSED SYSTEM

We here propose the image completion process with a handful of advantages providing an image
with visually plausible outcome without any inconsistencies, thereby providing the necessary image
enlarging.

A simple image operator called seam carving is used here that supports content-aware image
resizing for both reduction and expansion. A seam is an optimal 8-connected path of pixels on a single
image from top to bottom, or left to right, where optimality is defined by an image energy function.

No user intervention is required by our method, which avoids greedy patch assignments by
maintaining many candidate source patches. In this way, each missing block of pixels is allowed to
change its assigned patch many times throughout the execution of the algorithm, and is not enforced to
remain tied to the first label that has been assigned to it during the early stages of the completion process.

Our formulation applies not only to image completion, but also to texture synthesis and image
inpainting, thus providing a unified framework for all of these tasks.

To this end, a novel optimization scheme is proposed, the “Priority-BP” algorithm, which carries
2 major improvements over standard belief propagation: “dynamic label pruning” and “priority based
message scheduling”.
 Together, they bring a dramatic reduction in the overall computational cost of BP. It is to be
noted that both extensions are generic and can be used for the optimization of any MRF.

SYSTEM CONFIGURATION

HARDWARE SPECIFICATION:

 Processor : 733 MHz Pentium III Processor

 RAM : 128 MB
 Hard Drive : 10GB
 Monitor : 14” VGA COLOR MONITOR
 Keyboard : 104 Keys
 Floppy Drive : 1.44 MB
 Mouse : Logitech Serial Mouse
 Disk Space : 2GB

SOFTWARE SPECIFICATION:

 Platform : JAVA 1.5

 Operating System : Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 or
Windows 2000 or XP

 Tool Used : Swing and Collection API

SAMPLE SCREENSHOTS: