Modified deconvolution using wavelet image fusion

Image quality is affected by two predominant factors, noise and blur. Blur typically manifests itself as a smoothing of edges, and can be described as the convolution of an image with an unknown blur kernel. The inverse of convolution is deconvolution, a difficult process even in the absence of noise, which aims to recover the true image. Removing blur from an image has two stages: identifying or approximating the blur kernel, then performing a deconvolution of the estimated kernel and blurred image. Blur removal is often an iterative process, with successive approximations of the kernel leading to optimal results. However, it is unlikely that a given image is blurred uniformly. In real world situations most images are already blurred due to object motion or camera motion/de focus. Deconvolution, a computationally expensive process, will sharpen blurred regions, but can also degrade the regions previously unaffected by blur. To remedy the limitations of blur deconvolution, we propose a novel, modified deconvolution, using wavelet image fusion (moDuWIF), to remove blur from a no-reference image. First, we estimate the blur kernel, and then we perform a deconvolution. Finally, wavelet techniques are implemented to fuse the blurred and deblurred images. The details in the blurred image that are lost by deconvolution are recovered, and the sharpened features in the deblurred image are retained. The proposed technique is evaluated using several metrics and compared to standard approaches. Our results show that this approach has potential applications to many fields, including: medical imaging, topography, and computer vision.