Bayesian Image Restoration for Poisson Corrupted Image Using a Latent Variational Method with Gaussian MRF

We treat an image restoration problem with a Poisson noise channel using a Bayesian framework. The Poisson randomness might be appeared in observation of low contrast object in the field of imaging. The noise observation is often hard to treat in a theoretical analysis. In our formulation, we interpret the observation through the Poisson noise channel as a likelihood, and evaluate the bound of it with a Gaussian function using a latent variable method. We then introduce a Gaussian Markov random field (GMRF) as the prior for the Bayesian approach, and derive the posterior as a Gaussian distribution. The latent parameters in the likelihood and the hyperparameter in the GMRF prior could be treated as hidden parameters, so that, we propose an algorithm to infer them in the expectation maximization (EM) framework using loopy belief propagation (LBP). We confirm the ability of our algorithm in the computer simulation, and compare it with the results of other image restoration frameworks