Adaptive nonlocal filtering: a fast alternative to anisotropic diffusion for image enhancement

Nonlinear anisotropic diffusion algorithms provide significant improvement in image enhancement as compared to linear filters. However, the excessive computational cost of solving nonlinear PDEs precludes their use in real-time vision applications. We show that two orders of magnitude speed improvement is provided by a new image filtering paradigm in which an adaptively determined vector field specifies nonlocal application points for an image filter.