A two-step regularization approach for image noise removal

A two-step regularization algorithm is proposed for image noise removal. In the first step of the algorithm a smoothing filter such as a lowpass or Wiener filter is applied to reduce the noise level in the image and a new image model is formulated where the smoothing filter is treated as a degradation operator. In the second step of the algorithm a generalized regularization filter is applied to deblur the image. Motivated by this idea, a two-step regularization algorithm for image restoration is also proposed. Experimental results are included to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed methods over the conventional approaches.