Acoustic Denoising Using Dictionary Learning With Spectral and Temporal Regularization

We present a method for speech enhancement of data collected in extremely noisy environments, such as those obtained during magnetic resonance imaging scans. We propose an algorithm based on dictionary learning to perform this enhancement. We use complex nonnegative matrix factorization with intrasource additivity (CMF-WISA) to learn dictionaries of the noise and speech+noise portions of the data and use these to factor the noisy spectrum into estimated speech and noise components. We augment the CMF-WISA cost function with spectral and temporal regularization terms to improve the noise modeling. Based on both objective and subjective assessments, we find that our algorithm significantly outperforms traditional techniques such as least mean squares filtering, while not requiring prior knowledge or specific assumptions such as periodicity of the noise waveforms that current state-of-the-art algorithms require.