Abstract—Image deconvolution is formulated in the wavelet domain under the Bayesian framework. The well-known sparsity of the wavelet coefficients of real-world images is modeled by heavy-tailed priors belonging to the Gaussian scale mixture (GSM) class; i.e., priors given by a linear (finite of infinite) combination of Gaussian densities. This class includes, among others, the generalized Gaussian, the Jeffreys, and the Gaussian mixture priors. Necessary and sufficient conditions are stated under which the prior induced by a thresholding/shrinking denoising rule is a GSM. This result is then used to show that the prior induced by the “nonnegative garrote ” thresholding/shrinking rule, herein termed the garrote prior, is a GSM. To compute the maximum a posteriori estimate, we propose a new generalized expectation maximization (GEM) algorithm, where the missing variables are the scale factors of the GSM densities. The maximization step of the underlying expectation maximization algorithm is replaced with a linear stationary second-order iterative method. The result is a GEM algorithm of ( log) computational complexity. In a series of benchmark tests, the proposed approach outperforms or performs similarly to state-of-the art methods, demanding comparable (in some cases, much less) computational complexity. Index Terms—Bayesian, deconvolution, expectation maximization (EM), generalized expectation maximization (GEM), Gaussian scale mixtures (GSM), heavy-tailed priors, wavelet. I.

We present a variant of the AINV factorized sparse approximate inverse algorithm which is applicable to any symmetric positive definite matrix. The new preconditioner is breakdownfree and, when used in conjunction with the conjugate gradient method, results in a reliable solver for highly ill-conditioned linear systems. We also investigate an alternative approach to a stable approximate inverse algorithm, based on the idea of diagonally compensated reduction of matrix entries. The results of numerical tests on challenging linear systems arising from finite element modeling of elasticity and diffusion problems are presented.

Superresolution reconstruction produces a high-resolution image from a set of low-resolution images. Previous iterative methods for superresolution had not adequately addressed the computational and numerical issues for this ill-conditioned and typically underdetermined large scale problem. We propose efficient block circulant preconditioners for solving the Tikhonov-regularized superresolution problem by the conjugate gradient method. We also extend to underdetermined systems the derivation of the generalized cross-validation method for automatic calculation of regularization parameters. Effectiveness of our preconditioners and regularization techniques is demonstrated with superresolution results for a simulated sequence and a forward looking infrared (FLIR) camera image sequence.

. We investigate the use of sparse approximate inverse preconditioners for the iterative solution of linear systems with dense complex coefficient matrices arising from industrial electromagnetic problems. An approximate inverse is computed via a Frobenius norm approach with a prescribed nonzero pattern. Some strategies for determining the nonzero pattern of an approximate inverse are described. The results of numerical experiments suggest that sparse approximate inverse preconditioning is a viable approach for the solution of large-scale dense linear systems on parallel computers. Key words. Dense linear systems, preconditioning, sparse approximate inverses, complex symmetric matrices, scattering calculations, Krylov subspace methods, parallel computing. AMS(MOS) subject classification. 65F10, 65F50, 65R20, 65N38, 78-08, 78A50, 78A55. 1. Introduction. In the last decade, a significant amount of effort has been spent on the simulation of electromagnetic wave propagation phenomena to ad...

Gradient-based iterative methods often converge slowly for tomographic image reconstruction and image restoration problems, but can be accelerated by suitable preconditioners. Diagonal preconditioners offer some improvement in convergence rate, but do not incorporate the structure of the Hessian matrices in imaging problems. Circulant preconditioners can provide remarkable acceleration for inverse problems that are approximately shift-invariant, i.e. for those with approximately block-Toeplitz or block-circulant Hessians. However, in applications with nonuniform noise variance, such as arises from Poisson statistics in emission tomography and in quantum-limited optical imaging, the Hessian of the weighted least-squares objective function is quite shiftvariant, and circulant preconditioners perform poorly. Additional shift-variance is caused by edge-preserving regularization methods based on nonquadratic penalty functions. This paper describes new preconditioners that approximate more accurately the Hessian matrices of shiftvariant imaging problems. Compared to diagonal or circulant preconditioning, the new preconditioners lead to significantly faster convergence rates for the unconstrained conjugate-gradient (CG) iteration. We also propose a new efficient method for the line-search step required by CG methods. Applications to positron emission tomography (PET) illustrate the method.

. The restarted GMRES algorithm proposed by Saad and Schultz [22] is one of the most popular iterative methods for the solution of large linear systems of equations Ax = b with a nonsymmetric and sparse matrix. This algorithm is particularly attractive when a good preconditioner is available. The present paper describes two new methods for determining preconditioners from spectral information gathered by the Arnoldi process during iterations by the restarted GMRES algorithm. These methods seek to determine an invariant subspace of the matrix A associated with eigenvalues close to the origin, and move these eigenvalues so that a higher rate of convergence of the iterative methods is achieved. Key words. iterative method, nonsymmetric linear system, Arnoldi process AMS subject classifications. 65F10 1. Introduction. Many problems in Applied Mathematics and Engineering give rise to very large linear systems of equations Ax = b; A 2 R n\Thetan ; x; b 2 R n ; (1.1) with a sparse nons...

For earthquake simulations to play an important role in the reduction of seismic risk, they must be capable of high resolution and high fidelity. We have developed algorithms and tools for earthquake simulation based on multiresolution hexahedral meshes. We have used this capability to carry out 1 Hz simulations of the 1994 Northridge earthquake in the LA Basin using 100 million grid points. Our wave propagation solver sustains 1.21 teraflop/s for 4 hours on 3000 AlphaServer processors at 80% parallel efficiency. Because of uncertainties in characterizing earthquake source and basin material properties, a critical remaining challenge is to invert for source and material parameter fields for complex 3D basins from records of past earthquakes. Towards this end, we present results for material and source inversion of high-resolution models of basins undergoing antiplane motion using parallel scalable inversion algorithms that overcome many of the difficulties particular to inverse heterogeneous wave propagation problems.

. There is an increasing interest in using sparse approximate inverses as preconditioners for Krylov subspace iterative methods. Recent studies of Grote and Huckle [21] and Chow and Saad [11] also show that sparse approximate inverse preconditioner can be effective for a variety of matrices, e.g. Harwell-Boeing collections. Nonetheless a drawback is that it requires rapid decay of the inverse entries so that sparse approximate inverse is possible. However, for the class of matrices that come from elliptic PDE problems, this assumption may not necessarily hold. Our main idea is to look for a basis, other than the standard one, such that a sparse representation of the inverse is feasible. A crucial observation is that the kind of matrices we are interested in typically have a piecewise smooth inverse. We exploit this fact by applying wavelet techniques to construct a better sparse approximate inverse in the wavelet basis. We shall justify theoretically and numerically that our approach i...

Abstract. We analyze the conjugate gradient (CG) method with preconditioning slightly variable from one iteration to the next. To maintain the optimal convergence properties, we consider a variant proposed by Axelsson that performs an explicit orthogonalization of the search directions vectors. For this method, which we refer to as flexible CG, we develop a theoretical analysis that shows that the convergence rate is essentially independent of the variations in the preconditioner as long as the latter are kept sufficiently small. We further discuss the real convergence rate on the basis of some heuristic arguments supported by numerical experiments. Depending on the eigenvalue distribution corresponding to the fixed reference preconditioner, several situations have to be distinguished. In some cases, the convergence is as fast with truncated versions of the algorithm or even with the standard CG method, whereas quite large variations are allowed without too much penalty. In other cases, the flexible variant effectively outperforms the standard method, while the need for truncation limits the size of the variations that can be reasonably allowed.

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