A dual algorithm for L1-regularized reconstruction of vector fields

Recent advances in vector-field imaging have brought to the forefront the need for efficient denoising and reconstruction algorithms that take the physical properties of vector fields into account and can be applied to large volumes of data. With these requirements in mind, we propose a computationally efficient algorithm for variational de-noising and reconstruction of vector fields. Our variational objective combines rotation- and scale-invariant regularization functionals that permit one to tune the algorithm to the physical characteristics of the underlying phenomenon. In addition, these regularization terms involve L₁ norms in the spirit of total-variation (TV) regularization, which, as in the scalar case, leads to better preservation of discontinuities and superior SNR performance compared to its quadratic alternative. Some experimental results are provided to illustrate and verify the proposed scheme.