Variable-conductance, level-set curvature for image denoising

This paper describes a partial differential equation for denoising images. The proposed method is demonstrably superior to anisotropic diffusion (and its many variations) for denoising images that are approximately piecewise constant. The method relies on an equation that is the level-set equivalent of the anisotropic diffusion equation proposed by Perona and Malik (1990). This proposed equation has come up in the literature, but has failed to be fully utilized due to a lack of analysis and the need for a stable, accurate numerical implementation. Our analysis shows that the proposed method is more aggressive than anisotropic diffusion at enhancing and preserving edges, and is less sensitive to the edge contrast parameter. Empirical results confirm these advantages, and show that for certain classes of images, one should always prefer the proposed method over anisotropic diffusion.