We discuss a Bayesian formalism which gives rise to a type of wavelet threshold estimation in non-parametric regression. A prior distribution is imposed on the wavelet coefficients of the unknown response function, designed to capture the sparseness of wavelet expansion common to most applications. For the prior specified, the posterior median yields a thresholding procedure. Our prior model for the underlying function can be adjusted to give functions falling in any specific Besov space. We establish a relation between the hyperparameters of the prior model and the parameters of those Besov spaces within which realizations from the prior will fall. Such a relation gives insight into the meaning of the Besov space parameters. Moreover, the established relation makes it possible in principle to incorporate prior knowledge about the function's regularity properties into the prior model for its wavelet coefficients. However, prior knowledge about a function's regularity properties might b...

In this paper, we investigate various connections between wavelet shrinkage methods in image processing and Bayesian estimation using Generalized Gaussian priors. We present fundamental properties of the shrinkage rules implied by Generalized Gaussian and other heavy-tailed priors. This allows us to show a simple relationship between differentiability of the log-prior at zero and the sparsity of the estimates, as well as an equivalence between universal thresholding schemes and Bayesian estimation using a certain Generalized Gaussian prior.

The first part of this paper proposes an adaptive, data-driven threshold for image denoising via wavelet soft-thresholding. The threshold is derived in a Bayesian framework, and the prior used on the wavelet coefficients is the generalized Gaussian distribution (GGD) widely used in image processing applications. The proposed threshold is simple and closed-form, and it is adaptive to each subband because it depends on data-driven estimates of the parameters. Experimental results show that the proposed method, called BayesShrink, is typically within 5% of the MSE of the best soft-thresholding benchmark with the image assumed known. It also outperforms Donoho and Johnstone's SureShrink most of the time. The second part

This paper reviews the principle of Minimum Description Length (MDL) for problems of model selection. By viewing statistical modeling as a means of generating descriptions of observed data, the MDL framework discriminates between competing models based on the complexity of each description. This approach began with Kolmogorov's theory of algorithmic complexity, matured in the literature on information theory, and has recently received renewed interest within the statistics community. In the pages that follow, we review both the practical as well as the theoretical aspects of MDL as a tool for model selection, emphasizing the rich connections between information theory and statistics. At the boundary between these two disciplines, we find many interesting interpretations of popular frequentist and Bayesian procedures. As we will see, MDL provides an objective umbrella under which rather disparate approaches to statistical modeling can co-exist and be compared. We illustrate th...

this article a wavelet shrinkage by coherent

This paper reviews a significant component of the rich field of statistical multiresolution (MR) modeling and processing. These MR methods have found application and permeated the literature of a widely scattered set of disciplines, and one of our principal objectives is to present a single, coherent picture of this framework. A second goal is to describe how this topic fits into the even larger field of MR methods and concepts–in particular making ties to topics such as wavelets and multigrid methods. A third is to provide several alternate viewpoints for this body of work, as the methods and concepts we describe intersect with a number of other fields. The principle focus of our presentation is the class of MR Markov processes defined on pyramidally organized trees. The attractiveness of these models stems from both the very efficient algorithms they admit and their expressive power and broad applicability. We show how a variety of methods and models relate to this framework including models for self-similar and 1/f processes. We also illustrate how these methods have been used in practice. We discuss the construction of MR models on trees and show how questions that arise in this context make contact with wavelets, state space modeling of time series, system and parameter identification, and hidden

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this paper, is that with F =2logp. This choice was proposed by Foster &G eorge (1994) where it was called the Risk Inflation Criterion (RIC) because it asymptotically minimises the maximum predictive risk inflation due to selection when X is orthogonal. This choice and its minimax property were also discovered independently by Donoho & Johnstone (1994) in the wavelet regression context, where they refer to it as the universal hard thresholding rule

This paper explores a class of empirical Bayes methods for level-dependent threshold selection in wavelet shrinkage. The prior considered for each wavelet coefficient is a mixture of an atom of probability at zero and a heavy-tailed density. The mixing weight, or sparsity parameter, for each level of the transform is chosen by marginal maximum likelihood. If estimation

Wavelet shrinkage estimation is an increasingly popular method for signal denoising and compression. Although Bayes estimators can provide excellent mean squared error (MSE) properties, selection of an effective prior is a difficult task. To address this problem, we propose Empirical Bayes (EB) prior selection methods for various error distributions including the normal and the heavier tailed Student t distributions. Under such EB prior distributions, we obtain threshold shrinkage estimators based on model selection, and multiple shrinkage estimators based on model averaging. These EB estimators are seen to be computationally competitive with standard classical thresholding methods, and to be robust to outliers in both the data and wavelet domains. Simulated and real examples are used to illustrate the flexibility and improved MSE performance of these methods in a wide variety of settings.