CUDA-Based Acceleration Techniques for Image Filtering

Fast radiative transfer models (RTMs) are required to process a great amount of satellite-based atmospheric composition data. Specifically designed acceleration techniques can be incorporated in RTMs to simulate the reflected radiances with a fine spectral resolution, avoiding time-consuming computations on a fine resolution grid. In particular, in the cluster low-streams regression (CLSR) method, the computations on a fine resolution grid are performed by using the fast two-stream RTM, and then the spectra are corrected by using regression models between the two-stream and multi-stream RTMs. The performance enhancement due to such a scheme can be of about two orders of magnitude. In this paper, we consider a modification of the CLSR method (which is referred to as the double CLSR method), in which the single-scattering approximation is used for the computations on a fine resolution grid, while the two-stream spectra are computed by using the regression model between the two-stream RTM and the single-scattering approximation. Once the two-stream spectra are known, the CLSR method is applied the second time to restore the multi-stream spectra. Through a numerical analysis, it is shown that the double CLSR method yields an acceleration factor of about three orders of magnitude as compared to the reference multi-stream fine-resolution computations. The error of such an approach is below 0.05%. In addition, it is analysed how the CLSR method can be adopted for efficient computations for atmospheric scenarios containing aerosols. In particular, it is discussed how the precomputed data for clear sky conditions can be reused for computing the aerosol spectra in the framework of the CLSR method. The simulations are performed for the Hartley–Huggins, O2 A-, water vapour and CO2 weak absorption bands and five aerosol models from the optical properties of aerosols and clouds (OPAC) database.

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Guided image filtering based ℓ0 gradient minimization for limited-angle CT image reconstruction

Journal of Inverse and Ill-Posed Problems ◽

10.1515/jiip-2020-0096 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 0 (0) ◽

Author(s):

Tianyi Wang ◽

Chengxiang Wang ◽

Kequan Zhao ◽

Wei Yu ◽

Min Huang

Keyword(s):

Iteration Process ◽

Real Data ◽

Image Filtering ◽

Reconstruction Technique ◽

Ct Reconstruction ◽

Imaging Device ◽

Practical Applications ◽

Guided Image Filtering ◽

Simultaneous Algebraic Reconstruction Technique ◽

Limited Angle

Abstract Limited-angle computed tomography (CT) reconstruction problem arises in some practical applications due to restrictions in the scanning environment or CT imaging device. Some artifacts will be presented in image reconstructed by conventional analytical algorithms. Although some regularization strategies have been proposed to suppress the artifacts, such as total variation (TV) minimization, there is still distortion in some edge portions of image. Guided image filtering (GIF) has the advantage of smoothing the image as well as preserving the edge. To further improve the image quality and protect the edge of image, we propose a coupling method, that combines ℓ 0 {\ell_{0}} gradient minimization and GIF. An intermediate result obtained by ℓ 0 {\ell_{0}} gradient minimization is regarded as a guidance image of GIF, then GIF is used to filter the result reconstructed by simultaneous algebraic reconstruction technique (SART) with nonnegative constraint. It should be stressed that the guidance image is dynamically updated as the iteration process, which can transfer the edge to the filtered image. Some simulation and real data experiments are used to evaluate the proposed method. Experimental results show that our method owns some advantages in suppressing the artifacts of limited angle CT and in preserving the edge of image.

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