2014 International Conference on Electronic Systems, Signal Processing and Computing Technologies

Image Resolution Enhancement using Lifting Wavelet

and Stationary Wavelet Transform
Mayank Agrawal*, Ratnakar Dash
Department of Computer Science & Engineering
National Institute of Technology, Rourkela,
Odisha, India
*Corresponding Author (mayanksv12@gmail.com)
ratnakar@nitrkl.ac.in

Now-a-days high resolution images are used in many

applications. Resolution of an image stands for number of pixels
in image. Image with more number of pixels has higher
resolution. There are various techniques to increase the
resolution of the images and interpolation is one of them. To
increase the resolution of images various interpolation methods
are there, such as bilinear, bicubic and b-spline interpolation.

Abstract This paper presents a technique for enhancing

resolution of images by interpolating high frequency sub-bands
generated using lifting wavelet transform (LWT) and spatial
information of input low resolution (LR) image. Stationary wavelet
transform (SWT) is used at intermediate stage for edge
enhancement. The input image is decomposed using LWT in order
to generate high frequency (HF) sub-bands. The generated HF subbands are interpolated further. Different high frequency sub-bands
obtained through SWT are added to correct the estimated HF subbands. The input LR image is interpolated in parallel. All these
sub-bands and estimated LR image are reconstructed by inverse
lifting wavelet transformation (ILWT) to produce high resolution
image. The qualitative, quantitative and visual images of the
described technique show the superiority of the proposed method
over conventional and state-of-the-art methods.

A new resolution enhancement technique for digital images

has been proposed in this work using LWT. The HF sub-bands
are generated by decomposing input LR image using LWT.
These high frequency components contain vertical, diagonal and
horizontal detail coefficients of the input image. These
coefficients are interpolated using the idea of surface fitting [4].
The estimated coefficients then adjusted by adding the
coefficients that are generated by decomposing input LR image
using SWT. The input LR image interpolated using surface
fitting in parallel. The interpolated input image and the adjusted
high frequency components are agglomerated by ILWT in order
to generate input LR image.

KeywordsLifting wavelet transform, Stationary wavelet

transform, Surface Fitting, Inverse Lifting wavelet transform.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Wavelets are efficient and computationally fast

representations for data sets or general functions. The properties
of wavelets results in fact that for compression, estimating and
recovering functions wavelets is optimal bases [1]. Wavelets are
being used for image processing for last few decades. Many
wavelets have been used for resolution enhancement of images.
Discrete wavelet transform (DWT) [2] and Stationary wavelet
transform (SWT) [3] are wavelet transforms that are recently
used for resolution enhancement. DWT uses down-sampling and
generates various frequency sub-bands less than the size of input
image, while SWT generates frequency sub-band images of
same resolution as the input LR image.
Lifting scheme uses the idea of lazy wavelet. Lazy wavelet
is a function having the formal property of wavelets. A new
basis function is added by lifting scheme in order to build a new
wavelet, with improved properties [1]. Lifting scheme allows
building of second generation wavelets which are more general
than first generation wavelets.

II. PROPOSED TECHNIQUE

In the proposed method interpolation of high frequency
components is done using surface fitting. Conventional
interpolation method increases smoothness of picture result in
loss of sharp detail such as edges and curves. Reason for using
surface fitting as interpolation method is that, it uses two
dimensional Taylor series of second order. The first order
derivative retains edges and second order derivative retains
curves of the image. The idea of map estimation retains smooth
details of the image.

Resolution is crucial factor for an image. Images with higher

resolution contain more information than that of low resolution.

The input LR image is decomposed using one level LWT

(with Cohen-Daubechies-Feauveau 4.4 as liftwave) into different
sub-bands. Three high frequency sub-bands contain horizontal,

978-1-4799-2102-7/14 $31.00 2014 IEEE

DOI 10.1109/ICESC.2014.61

The proposed method is compared to various conventional

and state-of-the-art methods. The comparison of quantitative,
qualitative metrics and images results shows the eminence of
proposed method over traditional and existing methods.

322

vertical and diagonal details of image and one low frequency

sub-band contain approximation coefficients. The high frequency
components interpolated by factor 2 before adjusted by adding
high frequency components generated by SWT to make equal in
size. LWT uses down-sampling to generate high frequency
components cause loss of information thats why high frequency
components generated using SWT are being added to retain the
loss of information.

For the quantitative comparison of results PSNR matric is

used. PSNR values of the outputs of proposed technique were
compared to PSNR values of the outputs of various traditional
and existing methods. PSNR value is given by (1).
 = 10 log (

(1)

The comparison of PSNR for Lena, Elaine, Baboon and

Peppers images is shown in TABLE I.

The adjusted high frequency components further interpolated

by factor . Instead of providing low frequency components to
generate high resolution (HR) image, we have provided
interpolated input LR image. This input LR image has been
interpolated in parallel by factor .

TABLE I.
PSNR (DB) RESULTS FOR RESOLUTION INCREMENT FROM
128128 TO 512512 OF SUGGESTED METHOD CONFRONTED TRADITIONAL AND
EXISTING METHODS.
PSNR(DB)

Methods/
Images

High resolution image is generated by applying ILWT on

further interpolated HF sub-bands and interpolated input LR
image represented in Fig. 1. The HR image is 2 times greater in
size that of the input LR image. The output image contains sharp
edges and more details then that of directly interpolated image.
III.

    

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The proposed method was applied on well known images

taken from USC-SIPI image database [7]. Images Lena, Baboon,
Elaine, Peppers, Pentagon and Wall were used in experiment. All
programs were written in MATLAB. The resolution factor was 4
for all images. For Lena, Baboon, Elaine and Peppers images
resolution was enhanced from 128128 to 512512. Pentagon
and wall images were super-resolved from 256256 to
10241024.

Lena

Elaine

Baboon

Peppers

Bilinear

26.34

25.38

20.51

25.16

Bicubic

26.86

28.93

20.61

25.66

NEDI [5]

28.81

29.97

21.18

28.52

HMM [6]

28.86

30.51

21.47

29.58

DWT SR [2]

34.79

32.73

23.29

32.19

DWT&SWT SR
[3]

34.82

35.01

23.87

33.06

Proposed

34.91

34.95

28.92

36.10

L
(mn)/2

Input LR
Image
(mn)

LWT

Interpolation by
factor 2

H
(mn)/2

V
(mn)/2

+
Interpolation by
factor 2

Interpolation by
factor
+

L
(mn)
H
(mn)
V
(mn)
Interpolation by
factor

Interpolation by
factor

Interpolation by
factor 2

(mn)/2

SWT

Interpolation by
factor

D
(mn)

Fig. 1. Diagram of Proposed Method.

323

ILWT

Output HR
Image
2 (mn)

The PSNR comparison for resolution enhancement from

256256 to 10241024 is shown in Table II. Resolution
enhancement from 256256 to 10241024 is done on Pentagon
and Wall images.

The visual results of proposed method, bicubic and DWT&SWT

SR is shown in Fig. 2. Fig. 3 shows the visual results of all
images.

TABLE II.
PSNR (DB) RESULTS FOR RESOLUTION INCREMENT BY FACTOR
OF 4 (256256 - 10241024) OF PROPOSED METHOD COMPARED WITH
TRADITIONAL AND EXISTING METHODS.
PSNR(DB)

Methods/Images

Pentagon

Wall

Bilinear

28.61

29.27

Bicubic

28.99

30.24

DWT SR

29.67

32.45

DWT&SWT SR

31.05

33.18

Proposed Method

32.01

36.98

Blind image quality index BIQI [8] is used to compare the

superiority of the proposed method results to DWT&SWT SR
method shown in Table III. BIQI is also called no reference
image quality index. It is subjective to the perception of the
human vision without any knowledge of reference image. Images
with no blur and noise gives higher BIQI value.
Visual image fidelity (VIF) [9] index in another matric
recently proposed subjective to the visual quality of the image.
The quality of test image in this matric is evaluated by a
reference image. Higher the VIF index, better the quality of test
image. If VIF reaches to 1 that means test image is Perfect.
VIF is given by (2).
 =

Fig. 2. Visual results for Lena image (512512) (a) original image (b) bicubic
interpolated (c) DWT&SWT interpolated and (d) proposed method

IV.

 ()

(2)

 ()

Where I (Test) is amount of information extracted by brain

from test image and I (reference) the amount of information
extracted by brain from reference image. The comparison of VIF
index of results of proposed to the results of DWT&SWT SR is
shown in Table III.
TABLE III.

BIQI AND VIF INEDX COMPARISON OF PROPOSED METHOD AND

DWT&SWT SR METHOD.
BIQI

Images /
Methods

Proposed

DWT&SWT
SR

VIF
Proposed

DWT&SWT
SR

Lena

48.67

28.21

0.57

0.14

Baboon

55.67

46..9

0.49

0.17

Elaine

49.06

34..02

0.72

0.19

Peppers

39.65

34.37

0.83

0.19

Pantagon

77.82

40.30

0.57

0.16

Wall

51.75

59.77

0.55

0.15

CONCLUSION

The proposed work of resolution enhancement of images

interpolates the high frequency sub-bands of input LR image
generated by decomposition of image using LWT. The
interpolated high frequency sub-bands are modified by adding
high frequency sub-bands generated by decomposing input LR
images using SWT. These adjusted frequency sub-bands and
interpolated image put together by ILWT to generated high
resolution images. This method was applied on six well known
images. The qualitative quantitative and image results proved
the eminence of proposed method over traditional and existing
methods of resolution increment.

324

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Fig. 3. Outputs of proposed method (a) Baboon (512512) (b) Elaine
(512512) (c) Peppers (512512) (d) Pentagon (10241024) (e) Wall
(10241024).

325

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