Reconstruction of a high resolution image from registration and restoration of low resolution images

In applications that demand highly detailed images, it is often not feasible nor sometimes possible to acquire images of such high resolution by just using hardware (high precision optics and charge coupled devices (CCDs)). Instead, image processing methods may be used to construct a high resolution image from multiple, degraded, low resolution images. It is assumed that the low resolution images have been sub-sampled and displaced by sub-pixel shifts. Therefore, the problem can be divided into three sub-problems: registration (estimating the shifts), restoration, and interpolation. This paper focuses on solving the first two sub-problems simultaneously, using the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm. Experimental results are presented that demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach