Enlargement or reduction of digital images with minimum loss of information

• Published in: IEEE transactions on image processing 1995-03, Vol.4 (3), p.247-258
• Main Authors: Unser, M., Aldroubi, A., Eden, M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Approximation error; Digital images; Exact sciences and technology; Image processing; Image sampling; Information, signal and communications theory; Interpolation; Kernel; Least squares approximation; Polynomials; Signal processing; Signal sampling; Spline; Telecommunications and information theory
• ISSN: 1057-7149; 1941-0042
• DOI: 10.1109/83.366474

The purpose of this paper is to derive optimal spline algorithms for the enlargement or reduction of digital images by arbitrary (noninteger) scaling factors. In our formulation, the original and rescaled signals are each represented by an interpolating polynomial spline of degree n with step size one and /spl Delta/, respectively. The change of scale is achieved by determining the spline with step size /spl Delta/ that provides the closest approximation of the original signal in the L/sub 2/-norm. We show that this approximation can be computed in three steps: (i) a digital prefilter that provides the B-spline coefficients of the input signal, (ii) a resampling using an expansion formula with a modified sampling kernel that depends explicitly on /spl Delta/, and (iii) a digital postfilter that maps the result back into the signal domain. We provide explicit formulas for n=0, 1, and 3 and propose solutions for the efficient implementation of these algorithms. We consider image processing examples and show that the present method compares favorably with standard interpolation techniques. Finally, we discuss some properties of this approach and its connection with the classical technique of bandlimiting a signal, which provides the asymptotic limit of our algorithm as the order of the spline tends to infinity.< >