Donoho and Johnstone (1992a) proposed a method for reconstructing an unknown function f on [0; 1] from noisy data di = f(ti)+ zi, iid i =0;:::;n 1, ti = i=n, zi N(0; 1). The reconstruction fn ^ is de ned in the wavelet domain by translating all the empirical wavelet coe cients of d towards 0 by an amount p 2 log(n) = p n. We prove two results about that estimator. [Smooth]: With high probability ^ fn is at least as smooth as f, in any of a wide variety of smoothness measures. [Adapt]: The estimator comes nearly as close in mean square to f as any measurable estimator can come, uniformly over balls in each of two broad scales of smoothness classes. These two properties are unprecedented in several ways. Our proof of these results develops new facts about abstract statistical inference and its connection with an optimal recovery model.

We attempt to recover a function of unknown smoothness from noisy, sampled data. We introduce a procedure, SureShrink, which suppresses noise by thresholding the empirical wavelet coefficients. The thresholding is adaptive: a threshold level is assigned to each dyadic resolution level by the principle of minimizing the Stein Unbiased Estimate of Risk (Sure) for threshold estimates. The computational effort of the overall procedure is order N log(N) as a function of the sample size N. SureShrink is smoothness-adaptive: if the unknown function contains jumps, the reconstruction (essentially) does also; if the unknown function has a smooth piece, the reconstruction is (essentially) as smooth as the mother wavelet will allow. The procedure is in a sense optimally smoothness-adaptive: it is near-minimax simultaneously over a whole interval of the Besov scale; the size of this interval depends on the choice of mother wavelet. We know from a previous paper by the authors that traditional smoothing methods -- kernels, splines, and orthogonal series estimates -- even with optimal choices of the smoothing parameter, would be unable to perform

We attempt to recover an unknown function from noisy, sampled data. Using orthonormal bases of compactly supported wavelets we develop a nonlinear method which works in the wavelet domain by simple nonlinear shrinkage of the empirical wavelet coe cients. The shrinkage can be tuned to be nearly minimax over any member of a wide range of Triebel- and Besov-type smoothness constraints, and asymptotically minimax over Besov bodies with p q. Linear estimates cannot achieve even the minimax rates over Triebel and Besov classes with p <2, so our method can signi cantly outperform every linear method (kernel, smoothing spline, sieve,:::) in a minimax sense. Variants of our method based on simple threshold nonlinearities are nearly minimax. Our method possesses the interpretation of spatial adaptivity: it reconstructs using a kernel which mayvary in shape and bandwidth from point to point, depending on the data. Least favorable distributions for certain of the Triebel and Besov scales generate objects with sparse wavelet transforms. Many real objects have similarly sparse transforms, which suggests that these minimax results are relevant for practical problems. Sequels to this paper discuss practical implementation, spatial adaptation properties and applications to inverse problems.

Considerable e ort has been directed recently to develop asymptotically minimax methods in problems of recovering in nite-dimensional objects (curves, densities, spectral densities, images) from noisy data. A rich and complex body of work has evolved, with nearly- or exactly- minimax estimators being obtained for a variety of interesting problems. Unfortunately, the results have often not been translated into practice, for a variety of reasons { sometimes, similarity to known methods, sometimes, computational intractability, and sometimes, lack of spatial adaptivity. We discuss a method for curve estimation based on n noisy data; one translates the empirical wavelet coe cients towards the origin by an amount p p 2 log(n) = n. The method is di erent from methods in common use today, is computationally practical, and is spatially adaptive; thus it avoids a number of previous objections to minimax estimators. At the same time, the method is nearly minimax for a wide variety of loss functions { e.g. pointwise error, global error measured in L p norms, pointwise and global error in estimation of derivatives { and for a wide range of smoothness classes, including standard Holder classes, Sobolev classes, and Bounded Variation. This is amuch broader near-optimality than anything previously proposed in the minimax literature. Finally, the theory underlying the method is interesting, as it exploits a correspondence between statistical questions and questions of optimal recovery and information-based complexity.

An orthogonal basis of L 2 which is also an unconditional basis of a functional space F is a kind of optimal basis for compressing, estimating, and recovering functions in F. Simple thresholding operations, applied in the unconditional basis, work essentially better for compressing, estimating, and recovering than they do in any other orthogonal basis. In fact, simple thresholding in an unconditional basis works essentially better for recovery and estimation than other methods, period. (Performance is measured in an asymptotic minimax sense.) As an application, we formalize and prove Mallat's Heuristic, which says that wavelet bases are optimal for representing functions containing singularities, when there may be an arbitrary number of singularities, arbitrarily distributed.

Density estimation is a commonly used test case for non-parametric estimation methods. We explore the asymptotic properties of estimators based on thresholding of empirical wavelet coe cients. Minimax rates of convergence are studied over a large range of Besov function classes Bs;p;q and for a range of global L 0 p error measures, 1 p 0 < 1. A single wavelet threshold estimator is asymptotically minimax within logarithmic terms simultaneously over a range of spaces and error measures. In particular, when p 0> p, some form of non-linearity is essential, since the minimax linear estimators are suboptimal by polynomial powers of n. A second approach, using an approximation of a Gaussian white noise model in a Mallows metric, is used to attain exactly optimal rates of convergence for quadratic error (p 0 = 2).

. We describe wavelet methods for recovery of objects from noisy and incomplete data. The common themes: (a) the new methods utilize nonlinear operations in the wavelet domain; (b) they accomplish tasks which are not possible by traditional linear/Fourier approaches to such problems. We attempt to indicate the heuristic principles, theoretical foundations, and possible application areas for these methods. Areas covered: (1) Wavelet De-Noising. (2) Wavelet Approaches to Linear Inverse Problems. (4) Wavelet Packet De-Noising. (5) Segmented MultiResolutions. (6) Nonlinear Multi-resolutions. 1. Introduction. With the rapid development of computerized scientific instruments comes a wide variety of interesting problems for data analysis and signal processing. In fields ranging from Extragalactic Astronomy to Molecular Spectroscopy to Medical Imaging to Computer Vision, one must recover a signal, curve, image, spectrum, or density from incomplete, indirect, and noisy data. What can wavelets ...

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Estimation of the power spectrum S( f ) of a stationary random process can be viewed as a nonparametric statistical estimation problem. We introduce a nonparametric approach based on a wavelet representation for the logarithm of the unknown S( f ). This approach offers the ability to capture statistically significant components of lnS( f ) at different resolution levels and guarantees nonnegativity of the spectrum estimator. The spectrum estimation problem is set up as a problem of inference on the wavelet coefficients of a signal corrupted by additive non-Gaussian noise. We propose a wavelet thresholding technique to solve this problem under specified noise/resolution tradeoffs and show that the wavelet coefficients of the additive noise may be treated as independent random variables. The thresholds are computed using a saddle-point approximation to the distribution of the noise coefficients. EDICS: 3.1.1, 2.2.1, 2.2.4 Index terms : wavelets, spectrum estimation, noise reduction, non-...

We study the problem of estimating the log spectrum of a stationary Gaussian time series by thresholding the empirical wavelet coefficients. We propose the use of thresholds t j;n depending on sample size n, wavelet basis and resolution level j. At fine resolution levels (j = 1; 2;:::), we propose t j;n = ff j log n; where fff j g are level-dependent constants and at coarse levels (j AE 1) t