Octonion Sparse Representation for Color and Multispectral Image Processing

A recent trend in color image processing combines the quaternion algebra with dictionary learning methods. This paper aims to present a generalization of the quaternion dictionary learning method by using the octonion algebra. The octonion algebra combined with dictionary learning methods is well suited for representation of multispectral images with up to 7 color channels. Opposed to the classical dictionary learning techniques that treat multispectral images by concatenating spectral bands into a large monochrome image, we treat all the spectral bands simultaneously. Our approach leads to better preservation of color fidelity in true and false color images of the reconstructed multispectral image. To show the potential of the octonion based model, experiments are conducted for image reconstruction and denoising of color images as well as of extensively used Landsat 7 images.