RDEPS: A combined reaction-diffusion equation and photometric similarity filter for optical image restoration

Restoration of optical images degraded by atmospheric turbulence and various types of noise is still an open problem. In this paper, we propose an optical image restoration method based on a Reaction- Diffusion Equation and Photometric Similarity (RDEPS). We exploit photometric similarity and geometric closeness of the optical image by combining a photometric similarity function and a appropriately defined reaction-diffusion equation. Our resulting RDEPS filter is used to restore images degraded by atmospheric turbulence and noise, including Gaussian noise and impulse noise. Extensive experimental results show that our method outperforms other recently developed methods in terms of PSNR and SSIM. Moreover, the computational efficiency analysis shows that our RDEPS provides efficient restoration of optical images.