A new two dimensional empirical mode decomposition for images using inpainting

This paper introduces a two dimensional version of the empirical mode decomposition (2D-EMD) using an inpainting technique. The most natural use for 2D-EMD is in image processing. The algorithm hereby presented is based on the underlining idea of the one-dimensional EMD presented by Huang et al. in, but using inpainting and three surfaces: upper surface, lower surface, and mean surface. Upper and lower surfaces are surfaces connected by local maxima and minima, respectively. The mean surface is calculated by the average of the upper and lower surfaces. Using these three surfaces, the intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) are obtained through an iterative process, as in the 1D-EMD. The lower IMFs of the 1D-EMD correspond to high frequency components. The lower IMFs obtained with 2D-EMD show image edges.