LIC-based regularization of multi-valued images

In this paper, a general multi-valued image regularization method based on LIC's (line integral convolutions [B. Cabral, 1993]} is proposed. From the investigation of recent approaches based on multi-valued diffusion PDE's, we show how a regularization process is naturally decomposed, first as the estimation of its underlying smoothing geometry, and then, as the application of a locally and spatially oriented smoothing. Performing this last part using LIC's significatively improves the overall regularization process both in visual quality and processing time. We illustrate three different applications of our general regularization framework: color image denoising, inpainting and magnification.