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

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 sub-
bands are interpolated further. Different high frequency sub-bands
obtained through SWT are added to correct the estimated HF sub-
bands. 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.
Keywords—Lifting 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.
Resolution is crucial factor for an image. Images with higher
resolution contain more information than that of low resolution.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,

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DOI 10.1109/ICESC.2014.61
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
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)
components cause loss of information that’s why high frequency 
 
 

components generated using SWT are being added to retain the

loss of information. 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 γ. Instead of providing low frequency components to TABLE I. PSNR (DB) RESULTS FOR RESOLUTION INCREMENT FROM
generate high resolution (HR) image, we have provided 128×128 TO 512×512 OF SUGGESTED METHOD CONFRONTED TRADITIONAL AND
EXISTING METHODS.
interpolated input LR image. This input LR image has been
interpolated in parallel by factor γ. Methods/ PSNR(DB)
Images Lena Elaine Baboon Peppers
High resolution image is generated by applying ILWT on
further interpolated HF sub-bands and interpolated input LR Bilinear 26.34 25.38 20.51 25.16
image represented in Fig. 1. The HR image is 2γ times greater in
size that of the input LR image. The output image contains sharp Bicubic 26.86 28.93 20.61 25.66
edges and more details then that of directly interpolated image.
NEDI [5] 28.81 29.97 21.18 28.52
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS HMM [6] 28.86 30.51 21.47 29.58
The proposed method was applied on well known images
taken from USC-SIPI image database [7]. Images Lena, Baboon, DWT SR [2] 34.79 32.73 23.29 32.19
Elaine, Peppers, Pentagon and Wall were used in experiment. All DWT&SWT SR
34.82 35.01 23.87 33.06
programs were written in MATLAB. The resolution factor was 4 [3]
for all images. For Lena, Baboon, Elaine and Peppers images Proposed 34.91 34.95 28.92 36.10
resolution was enhanced from 128×128 to 512×512. Pentagon
and wall images were super-resolved from 256×256 to
1024×1024.

L
(m×n)/2
Interpolation by Interpolation by
factor 2 factor γ
LWT H +
Input LR (m×n)/2 Interpolation by
Interpolation by
Image factor γ ILWT
factor 2 Output HR
(m×n) V + Image
(m×n)/2
Interpolation by Interpolation by 2γ (m×n)
factor 2 factor γ
D
(m×n)/2 +

L
(m×n)

H
SWT (m×n)

V
(m×n)
Interpolation by
D
factor γ
(m×n)

Fig. 1. Diagram of Proposed Method.

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 The PSNR comparison for resolution enhancement from The visual results of proposed method, bicubic and DWT&SWT
256×256 to 1024×1024 is shown in Table II. Resolution SR is shown in Fig. 2. Fig. 3 shows the visual results of all
enhancement from 256×256 to 1024×1024 is done on Pentagon images.
and Wall images.

TABLE II. PSNR (DB) RESULTS FOR RESOLUTION INCREMENT BY FACTOR

OF 4 (256×256 - 1024×1024) 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 Fig. 2. Visual results for Lena image (512×512) (a) original image (b) bicubic
image. If VIF reaches to 1 that means test image is “Perfect”. interpolated (c) DWT&SWT interpolated and (d) proposed method
VIF is given by (2).
IV. CONCLUSION
 ()
 = (2) The proposed work of resolution enhancement of images
 ()
interpolates the high frequency sub-bands of input LR image
Where I (Test) is amount of information extracted by brain
from test image and I (reference) the amount of information generated by decomposition of image using LWT. The
extracted by brain from reference image. The comparison of VIF interpolated high frequency sub-bands are modified by adding
index of results of proposed to the results of DWT&SWT SR is high frequency sub-bands generated by decomposing input LR
shown in Table III. images using SWT. These adjusted frequency sub-bands and
interpolated image put together by ILWT to generated high
TABLE III. BIQI AND VIF INEDX COMPARISON OF PROPOSED METHOD AND resolution images. This method was applied on six well known
DWT&SWT SR METHOD. images. The qualitative quantitative and image results proved
BIQI VIF the eminence of proposed method over traditional and existing
Images / methods of resolution increment.
Methods DWT&SWT DWT&SWT
Proposed Proposed
SR 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

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Fig. 3. Outputs of proposed method (a) Baboon (512×512) (b) Elaine
(512×512) (c) Peppers (512×512) (d) Pentagon (1024×1024) (e) Wall
(1024×1024).

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