Gradient sensitive kernel for Image Denoising, using Gaussian Process Regression

Abstract

We target the problem of Image Denoising using Gaussian Processes Regression (GPR). Being a non-parametric regression technique, GPR has received much attention in the recent past and here we further explore its versatility by applying it to a denoising problem. The focus is primarily on the design of a local gradient sensitive kernel that captures pixel similarity in the context of image denoising. This novel kernel formulation is used to shape the smoothness of the joint GP prior. We apply the GPR denoising technique to small patches and then stitch back these patches, this allows the priors to be local and relevant, also this helps us in dealing with GPR complexity. We demonstrate that our GPR based technique gives better PSNR values in comparison to existing popular denoising techniques.