title: Phase unwrapping via graph cuts.
abstract: Phase unwrapping is the inference of absolute phase from modulo-2pi phase. This paper introduces a new energy minimization framework for phase unwrapping. The considered objective functions are first-order Markov random fields. We provide an exact energy minimization algorithm, whenever the corresponding clique potentials are convex, namely for the phase unwrapping classical Lp norm, with p > or = 1. Its complexity is KT (n, 3n), where K is the length of the absolute phase domain measured in 2pi units and T (n, m) is the complexity of a max-flow computation in a graph with n nodes and m edges. For nonconvex clique potentials, often used owing to their discontinuity preserving ability, we face an NP-hard problem for which we devise an approximate solution. Both algorithms solve integer optimization problems by computing a sequence of binary optimizations, each one solved by graph cut techniques. Accordingly, we name the two algorithms PUMA, for phase unwrappping max-flow/min-cut. A set of experimental results illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach and its competitiveness in comparison with state-of-the-art phase unwrapping algorithms.
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Telecomunicações, Instituto Superior Técnico, and the Technical University of Lisbon, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal. bioucas@lx.it.pt
authors.forename: José M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Bioucas-Dias
authors.forename: Gonçalo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Valadão
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity