Image magnification method using joint diffusion

In this paper a new algorithm for image magnification is presented. Because linear magnification/interpolation techniques diminish the contrast and produce sawtooth effects, in recent years, many nonlinear interpolation methods, especially nonlinear diffusion based approaches, have been proposed to solve these problems. Two recently proposed techniques for interpolation by diffusion, forward and backward diffusion (FAB) and level-set reconstruction (LSR), cannot enhance the contrast and smooth edges simultaneously. In this article, a novel Partial Differential Equations (PDE) based approach is presented. The contributions of the paper include: firstly, a unified form of diffusion joining FAB and LSR is constructed to have all of their virtues; secondly, to eliminate artifacts of the joint diffusion, soft constraint takes the place of hard constraint presented by LSR; thirdly, the determination of joint coefficients, criterion for stopping time and color image processing are also discussed. The results demonstrate that the method is visually and quantitatively better than Bicubic, FAB and LSR.