Demosaicing: image reconstruction from color CCD samples

A simplified color image formation model is used to construct an algorithm for image reconstruction from CCD sensors samples. The proposed method involves two successive steps. The first is motivated by Cok's (1994) template matching technique, while the second step uses steerable inverse diffusion in color. Classical linear signal processing techniques tend to oversmooth the image and result in noticeable color artifacts along edges and sharp features. The question is how should the different color channels support each other to form the best possible reconstruction. Our answer is to let the edges support the color information, and the color channels support the edges, and thereby achieve better perceptual results than those that are bounded by the sampling theoretical limit.