Efficient SAV Algorithms for Curvature Minimization Problems

Chenxin Wang, Zhenwei Zhang, Zhichang Guo, Tieyong Zeng, Yuping Duan

Abstract: The curvature regularization method is well-known for its good geometric interpretability and strong priors in the continuity of edges, which has been applied to various image processing tasks. However, due to the non-convex, non-smooth, and highly non-linear intrinsic limitations, most existing algorithms lack a convergence guarantee. This paper proposes an efficient yet accurate scalar auxiliary variable (SAV) scheme for solving both mean curvature and Gaussian curvature minimization problems. The SAV-based algorithms are shown unconditionally energy diminishing, fast convergent, and very easy to be implemented for different image applications. Numerical experiments on noise removal, image deblurring, and single image super-resolution are presented on both gray and color image datasets to demonstrate the robustness and efficiency of our method. Source codes are made publicly available at <uri xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://github.com/Duanlab123/SAV-curvature</uri> .