International Journal of Computer Information Systems,

Vol. 2, No. 5, 2011

Image Restoration in Neural Network Domain

using Back Propagation Network Approach
Charu Khare

Kapil Kumar Nagwanshi

M.Tech. Scholar
RCET, CSV Technical University
Bhilai, INDIA
kharecharu111@gmail.com

Member IEEE, Reader (CSE)

RCET, CSV Technical University
Bhilai, INDIA
kapilkn@ieee.org

AbstractImage Restoration is a process by which an image

suffering some form of distortion or degradation can be
recovered to its original form. Many techniques have been
implemented for image restoration for achieving better
performance and quality image, often the benefits of
improving image quality to the maximum possible extent far
outweigh the cost and complexity of the restoration algorithms
involved. In this paper, we consider the problem of an image
restoration degraded by a blur function and corrupted by
noise. Here we are applying the Back Propagation Neural
Network approach for image restoration. This method is an
iterative approach and attractive because of its improved
performance and achieving high quality image in terms of
peak signal to noise ratio.
Keywords- Back Propagation Neural Network, Peak Signal
to Noise Ratio, Image Restoration, Neural Network Approch,
Blur Model, Point Spread Function.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Images are produced to record or display useful

information. Due to imperfections in the imaging and
capturing process, however, the recorded image invariably
represents a degraded version of the original scene. The
undoing of these imperfections is crucial to many of the
subsequent image processing tasks. There exists a wide
range of different degradations that need to be taken into
account, covering for instance noise, geometrical
degradations (pin cushion distortion), illumination and color
imperfections (under/overexposure, saturation), and blur.
Image processing is a rapidly growing area of computer
science. Its growth has been fueled by technological
advances in digital imaging, computer processors and mass
storage devices. Fields which traditionally used analog
imaging are now switching to digital systems, for their
flexibility and affordability. Image processing algorithms are
designed to handle different problem domains. Some of the
broad area includes (i) Image Representation and Modeling
Image Transforms, (ii) Image Enhancement (iii)Image
Restoration, (iv) Image Analysis (v) Image Reconstruction,
(vi) Image Segmentation and (vii) Image Data Compression.
Important examples are medicine, film and video production,
photography, remote sensing, and security monitoring. These

May Issue

and other sources produce huge volumes of digital image

data every day, more than could ever be examined manually.
Digital image processing is concerned primarily with
extracting useful information from images. Ideally, this is
done by computers, with little or no human intervention.
Image processing algorithms may be placed at three levels.
At the lowest level are those techniques which deal directly
with the raw, possibly noisy pixel values, with denoising and
edge detection being good examples. In the middle are
algorithms which utilize low level results for further means,
such as segmentation and edge linking. At the highest level,
are those methods which attempt to extract semantic
meaning from the information provided by the lower levels,
for example, handwriting recognition. Natural images have
distinct features that allow the human visual system to detect
the presence of distortion, and to extract remaining
information from the observation.
A. Image Restoration
The field of image restoration has a long history that
began in the 1950s with the space program. The objective of
image restoration is to reconstruct the original image from its
degraded version. Goal is to treat an image corrupted by
noise in order to recover the original image. It is usually
done by modeling the noise and removing it without
removing every high frequency component of the image,
since it may also remove image fine details. Image
restoration, is to obtain the original, sharp version of a
blurred image. There exist many applications for image
restoration, including astronomical imaging [12], medical
imaging [6], law enforcement, forensic science, and digital
media restoration and many other poor-quality imaging [5].
The problem has attracted strong research interest and will
continue to do so, not only because it has many applications
but also because it has a simple mathematical formulation
yet it is a classical inverse problem [1] for which good
solutions are not easily obtained. The simple equation for
expressing image blurring/degradation is as follows:
g=fh+n
(1)
The field of image restoration (sometimes referred to as
image deblurring or image deconvolution) is concerned with

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the reconstruction or estimation of the uncorrupted image
from a blurred and noisy one. Essentially, it tries to perform
an operation on the image that is the inverse of the
imperfections in the image formation system. In the use of
image restoration methods, the characteristics of the
degrading system and the noise are assumed to be known a
priori.
B. Degradation model
Capturing an image exactly as it appears in the real world
is very difficult if not impossible. One has to content with
Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) and inter symbol
interference (ISI). In case of photography or imaging
systems these are caused by the graininess of the emulsion,
motion-blur, and camera focus problems. The result of all
these degradations is that the image is an approximation of
the original. The above mentioned degradation process can
adequately be described by a linear spatial model as shown
in Fig 1. The original input is a two-dimensional (2D) image
. This image is operated on by the system H and after
the addition of
one can obtain the degraded image
. Digital image restoration may be viewed as a
process in which we try to obtain an approximation to
given
and H.

Figure 1: Image Degradation Model

The input- output relationship in fig 1, can be expressed as:

(2)

If the system contains no noise we may assume

and
. For the linear spatial
model depicted in fig 1, we may also write
(3)

and also,
(4)

Equation (3) says that the response to the sum of many

inputs equals the sum of the response to each individual
input. This is known as the additively property. Equation (4)
indicates that the response to a constant multiple of any input
is equal to the response to that input multiplied by the
particular constant. This is referred to as the homogeneity
property. The operator H is said to be position or space
invariant if
(5)

May Issue

and any variables and .

There are two primary sources of degradation, each of
which introduces peculiar problems for image restoration.
The most basic of these is observation noise. Observation
noise is a randomly introduced degradation and can be
caused by film-grain noise, quantization noise, or other
random disturbances. For each of these causes, however, the
process by which the degradation is introduced cannot be
described deterministically, and information in the image is
lost. Another source of image degradations is blur. Blur can
be introduced by an improperly focused lens, relative motion
between the camera and the scene, or atmospheric
turbulence. Attempting to reverse or invert this blur process
introduces a number of problems. First, the inversion of this
process often amplifies the noise in the image. Second, the
process may be non-invertible, so that multiple solutions are
possible. Third, the blurred image is typically a windowed
version of the blurred scene, so that some of the boundary
information necessary for reversing the blur is lost. Finally,
the blur itself may be unknown or incompletely specified. In
each case, the image restoration process must deal with the
fact that information has been lost or obscured.
for any

C. Neural Network Approach

A number of new restoration methodologies have been
developed in recent years and has interest in new aspects of
image restoration problems. In general restoration techniques
are oriented towards the recovery of the real image by
applying a restoration process to its degraded version
[10][14]. Some common methods for image restoration
include the inverse filter, the Wiener filter, the movingaverage filter, the parametric Wiener filter, the meansquared-error filter, the Richardson-Lucy algorithm, the
Adaptive Fuzzy Mean Filter, the band-pass filter and the
singular value decomposition technique [10], as well as, the
regularization filter.
Recently, some of the methods for image restoration have
been modified in an attempt to improve their solutions and
reduce the computational complexity [8]. Due to the wide
use as tools for information processing, Artificial Neural
Network (ANN) models have also been used to design new
solutions to the image restoration problem. A Neural
network is a machine that is designed to model the way in
which the brain performs a particular task or function of
interest: The network is usually implemented by using
electronic components or is simulated in software on a
digital computer. A neural network is a massively parallel
distributed processor made up of simple processing units
which has a natural propensity for storing experiential
knowledge and making it available for use. It resembles the
brain in two respects: 1) Knowledge is required by the
network from its environment through a learning process.2)
Interneuron connection strengths, known as synaptic
weights, are used to store the acquired knowledge [17].
They present some features that may lead to better results in
the image restoration process [19]. Such features are related

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Vol. 2, No. 5, 2011
to its plasticity and their parallel computing power that have
made them appropriate for applications in pattern
recognition, signal processing, image processing, computer
vision, and several other application areas.
Neural networks is a form of multiprocessor computer
system, with simple processing elements, a high degree of
interconnection, adaptive interaction between elements,
When an element of the neural network fails, it can continue
without any problem by their parallel nature [11].

Theoretically (6) can never be satisfied. However,

as long as the amount of spreading in the
continuous image is smaller than the sampling grid
applied to obtain the discrete image, equation (7)
will be arrived.
Uniform Linear Motion Blur
Motion blur incorporates a number of specific
blurring phenomena, including general translations,
rotations, and scale changes. Probably the most
common of these is uniform linear motion blur,
which has a simple functional form. Assume that
the scene is translating with respect to the camera at
a constant velocity v at an angle of from the
horizontal axis for the time period T. If L = vT, the
length of motion during exposure, the PSF is given
by:
(8)

Figure 2 : Artificial Neural Network

ANN provides a robust tool for approximating a target

function given a set input output example and for the
reconstruction function from a class a images. Algorithm
such as the Backpropagation and the Perceptron use
gradient- decent techniques to tune the network parameters
to best-fit a training set of input-output examples. In this
paper we present a novel neural network based Back
Propagation approach for image restoration. This approch is
capable of learning complex non-linear functions is expected
to produce better structure espacially in high frequency
regions of the image. We used a two-layer Backpropagation
network with full connectivity.
D. Blur Model
The goal of blur identification is to estimate the attributes
of the imperfect imaging system from the observed degraded
image itself prior to the restoration process [9]. These blurs
appear frequently in practice and were used in the
experiments. Because blurring is a continuous process, the
blur functions are presented in their continuous forms. In
digital image processing, these blur functions must be
discretized. A number of common blur models are presented
in this paper [4].
No Blur Model
In case the recorded image is imaged perfectly, no
blur will be apparent in the discrete image. The
spatially continuous PSF can then be modeled as a
Dirac delta function 19]:
d(x,y)=(x,y)
and the spatially discrete PSF as a unit pulse:

(9)

In the PSF above, R represents the radius of the

PSF and is a function of the focal length and the
distance of the object from the camera. This model
assumes that the distance of the object from the
camera does not vary across the image; however, if
the object distance varies across the observed scene,
the PSF will be spatially variant.
Long Term Atmospheric Turbulance Blur
Atmospheric turbulence blur is a factor in image
acquisition over a significant distance through the
atmosphere, such as in aerial imaging for weather
forecasting [4]. Although turbulence is not a
deterministic process, the long-term effects can be
modeled adequately as a Gaussian PSF by:
(10)

(6)

(7)

May Issue

If the entire scene is moving, the PSF is spaceinvariant. However, if an object within the scene is
moving independently of the background, the PSF
is clearly spatially variant.
Out of focus Blur
The PSF describing an out-of-focus blur must take
into account the focal length, the aperture of the
lens, the distance between camera and object, and
the wavelength of the light [4]. If the degree of
defocusing is large relative to the wavelengths of
the light passing through the optical system,
geometrical optics provides an adequate functional
representation of PSF, which is given by:

The parameter
controls the severity of the
degradation .
Where Point Spread Function (PSF) is the degree to
which an optical system blurs (spreads) a point of light [2].
The PSF is the inverse Fourier transform of Optical Transfer
Function (OTF).in the frequency domain ,the OTF describes

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the response of a linear, position-invariant system to an
impulse.OTF is the Fourier transfer of the point (PSF) [13].
II.

B. Mathematical Analysis

Flow Diagram

PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION AND SOLUTION

METHODOLOGY

A. Back Propagation Neural Network Approch

Back propagation is a form of supervised learning for
multi layer nets, also known as the generalized delta rule.
Error data at the output layer is "back propagated" to earlier
ones, allowing incoming weights to these layers to be
updated. It is most often used as training algorithm in current
neural network applications [3][7]. The back propagation
algorithm was developed by Paul Werbos in 1974 and
rediscovered independently by Rumelhart and Parker. Since
its rediscovery, the back propagation algorithm has been
widely used as a learning algorithm in feed forward
multilayer neural networks. What makes this algorithm
different than the others is the process by which the weights
are calculated during the learning network. In general, the
difficulty with multilayer Perceptrons is calculating the
weights of the hidden layers in an efficient way that result in
the least (or zero) output error; the more hidden layers there
are, the more difficult it becomes. To update the weights, one
must calculate an error. At the output layer this error is easily
measured; this is the difference between the actual and
desired (target) outputs. At the hidden layers, however, there
is no direct observation of the error; hence, some other
technique must be used. To calculate an error at the hidden
layers that will cause minimization of the output error, as this
is the ultimate goal. The back propagation algorithm is an
involved mathematical tool; however, execution of the
training equations is based on iterative processes, and thus is
easily implementable on computer. By using the back
propagation approach, better restored images are achieved in
comparative to other techniques used.
A typical back propagation network [16] with Multilayer, feed-forward supervised learning is as shown in the
figure: 3. Here learning process in Back propagation requires
pairs of input and target vectors. The output vector o is
compared with target vector t. In case of difference of o
and t vectors, the weights are adjusted to minimize the
difference. Initially random weights and thresholds are
assigned to the network. These weights are updated every
iteration in order to minimize the mean square error between
the output vector and the target vector.

Figure 4: Flow Diagram of Back Propagation approach

1.

2.
Figure 3: Basic Block of Back Propagation Neural Network

May Issue

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Algorithm Used
Back-propagation algorithm [17] is a widely used
learning algorithm in Artificial Neural Networks.
This algorithm is based on the error correction
learning rule. Error propagation consists of two
passes through the different layers of the network, a
forward pass and a backward pass. In the forward
pass the input vector
is applied to the sensory nodes of the network and
its effect propagates through the network layer by
layer. Finally a set of outputs is produced as the
actual response of the network. During the forward
pass the synaptic weight of the networks are all
fixed. During the back pass the synaptic weights are
all adjusted in accordance with an error-correction
rule. The actual response of the network is
subtracted from the desired response to produce an
error signal. This error signal is then propagated
backward through the network against the direction
of synaptic conditions. The synaptic weights are
adjusted to make the actual response of the network
move closer to the desired response.
Normalize the inputs and outputs with respect to
their maximum values. It is proved that the neural
networks work better if input and outputs lie
between 0-1. For each training pair, assume there
are I inputs given by
and n outputs
in a normalized form.
nx1
Assume the number of neurons in the hidden layer
to lie between 1<m<2I.

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Vol. 2, No. 5, 2011
3.

4.

5.

6.

[v] represents the weights of synapses connecting

Input neurons and hidden neurons and [w]
represents weights of synapses connecting hidden
neurons and output neurons. Initialize the weights
to small random values usually from -1 to 1.For
general problems, can be assumed as 1 and the
threshold values can be taken as zero.
= [random weights]
= [random weights]
=
= [o]
For the training data, present one set of inputs and
outputs. Present the pattern to the input layer as
inputs to the input layer. By using linear activation
function, the output of the input layer may be
evaluated as
(11)
1x1
1x1
Compute the inputs to the hidden layer by
multiplying corresponding weights of synapses as
(12)
mx1 mx1 1x1
Let the hidden layer units evaluate the output using
the sigmodial function as:
(13)

7.

8.

Compute the inputs to the output layer by

multiplying corresponding weights of synapses as
(14)
nx1 nxm mx1
Let the output layer units evaluate the output using
the sigmodial function as:
(15)

9.

The above is the network output.

Calculate the error and the difference between the
network output and the desired output as for the ith
training set as
(16)

13. Find {e}= [w] {d} as

mx1 mxn nx1
(20)

Find [X] matrix as

[X] =
1xm 1x1 1xm
1x1 1xm
14. Find
1xm
1xm 1xm
15. Find

(21)
(22)
(23)
(24)

16. Find error rate as

Error Rate =

(25)

17. Repeat step 4- 16 unit the convergence in the error

rate is less than the minimum value (tolerance
value).
III.

SIMULATION RESULT

Comparative analysis of PSNR percentage for different

Restoration Techniques, like Lucy- Richardson algorithm,
Wiener Filter with Back Propagation Neural Network
algorithm has been presented in Figure 7, and also
quantitative results has been given in table [Table I ]
showing their performance. Along with the figures and table,
graph is plotted, shown in Figure 5 [graph1], has also been
given for all the quantitative measures, of four different
standard images (Lena, Camera Man, Fruits, Baboon) to
have a quick insight into the comparative performance of the
applied approaches along with the proposed one i.e. Back
Propagation Neural Network Algorithm. Graph is plotted of
standard Image LENA using Back Propagation Neural
Network in Figure 6 [graph (a), (b), (c)] representing
different PSNR values with respect to different parameters
i.e. length, snr, angle.
TABLE I.

PSNR VALUES OF IMAGE RESTORATION TECHNIQUES

PSNR of Restoration Techniques

Images

10. Find {d} as

(17)

11. Find [Y] matrix as

[Y] =
mxn mx1 1xn
12. Find
1xm
1xm

May Issue

(18)

Lucy

Wiener

NN

Lena

12.1537

14.28

30.0361

Camera Man

9.096

10.743

33.4281

Fruits

11.4185

13.3395

31.9419

Baboon

13.7738

15.6843

28.6984

At constant values of SNR=0.5, Length=7, Angle=60

where

(19)
1xm

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35

PSNR wrt Angle

Peak Signal to noise Ratio (PSNR

Peak Signal To Noise Rotio (PSNR)

30

25
Lena
20
Camera
Man
Fruits

15

Baboon

10

30.18
30.17
30.16
30.15
30.14
30.13
30.12
30.11
30.1
30.09
30.08
BPN

30.1729

30.1135

30.1406

30.1348

30.1496

(c)

0
Lucy

Wiener

NN

Figure 6: Graph Showing (a)PSNR wrt Length (b) PSNR wrt SNR (c)
PSNR wrt Angle, of standard Image LENA using Back Propagation NN.

Figure 5: Graph Showing PSNR values of Different Images for various

Restoration Techniques.

Peak Signal to noise Ratio (PSNR)

PSNR wrt Length

30.18
30.16
30.14
30.12
30.1
30.08
30.06
30.04
30.02
30
29.98
29.96
BPN

30.1117

30.1046

30.1547

30.0361

30.1024

(a)

IV.

CONCLUTION

In this paper we present a novel approach for Image

Restoration. Several approaches have been applied and were
presented using various filters, algorithms and Artificial
Neural Network. The Back Propagation Neural Network has
the simplest architecture of the various Artificial Neural
Networks that have been developed for Image Restoration.
Many research works have been carried out to improve the
performance of degraded image. All these methods are
computationally complex in nature. Experimental results
show the adequacy of the proposed approach to the problem.
Quantitative analysis shows the better performance of
proposed method presented i.e. Back Propagation Neural
Network algorithm compare to Lucy Richardson
Algorithm and Wiener filter.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Peak Signal To Noise Ratio (PSNR)

PSNR wrt SNR

The authors wish thanks to Dr. S. M. Prasanna Kumar,

Principal, RCET- Bhilai for his kind support. We would also
especially grateful to Mr. Santosh Rungta, Chairman, RCETBhilai for providing necessary facilities to incorporate this
research work.

30.14
30.13
30.12
30.11
30.1
30.09
30.08
30.07
30.06
30.05
30.04
BPN

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30.1135

30.0731

30.1349

30.0934

30.1135

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May Issue

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(a) Original Image

(b) Degraded Image

(c) Restored Image

(d) Original Image

(e) Degraded Image

(f) Restored Image

(g) Original Image

(h) Degraded Image

(i) Restored Image

(j) Original Image

(k) Degraded Image

(l) Restored Image

Figure 7: Applying Back Propagation Neural Network Approach at four different Images (Lena, Camera Man, Fruits, Baboon

May Issue

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